GUI Performance Metrics Framework : Monitoring performance of web clients to improve user experience

Sammanfattning: When using graphical user interfaces (GUIs), the main problems that frustrates users are long response times and delays. These problems create a bad impression of the GUI, as well as of the company that created it.When providing a GUI to users it is important to provide intuition, ease of use and simplicity while still delivering good performance. However, some factors that play a major role regarding the performance aspect is outside the developers’ hands, namely the client’s internet connection and hardware. Since every client has a different combination of internet connection and hardware, it can be a hassle to satisfy everyone while still providing an intuitive and responsive GUI.The aim of this study is to find a way to monitor performance of a web GUI, where performance comprises response times and render times, and in doing so, enable the improvement of response times and render times by collecting data that can be analyzed.A framework that monitors the performance of a web GUI was developed as a proof of concept. The framework collects relevant data regarding performance of the web GUI and stores the data in a database. The stored data can then be manually analyzed by developers to find weak points in the system regarding performance. This is achieved without interfering with the GUI or impacting the user experience negatively.