Papers for

robotic process automation designers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Mapping computer use at multiple levels reveals user and agent differences

Comparing Computer Use Behavior Across Multiple Levels of Abstraction

Abstract: Interaction traces record how people and agents use computers, and comparing them can reveal usability barriers, differences in expertise, and human--agent similarity. Yet traces are recorded as low-level, interface-specific actions, making comparisons difficult across tasks, interfaces, and input modalities. Existing approaches either compare these actions directly, reduce traces to aggregate outcomes, or summarize them at higher-level goals, obscuring where behavior differs. We present MAP (Multi-level Action Parsing), a hierarchical semantic representation and annotation pipeline that maps traces into a common vocabulary across linked levels of abstraction. MAP compares traces by sequence, recurring patterns, and effort, localizing differences by type and abstraction level. A technical evaluation across three computer use datasets shows high agreement with manual annotations and broad coverage of behavior. Applying MAP shows that sighted and blind users increasingly converge at higher levels despite navigation differences, while agents omit corrective, help-seeking, and recovery behaviors present in human traces.

Mon 19 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Comparing how people use computers is hard because computer actions are often recorded in very detailed, specific ways. The authors created a new method called MAP that groups these detailed actions into a common, simpler language at different levels, making comparison easier and clearer. They showed MAP works well by testing it on several datasets and found interesting differences: blind and sighted users act more similarly at higher task levels, while artificial agents skip helpful human behaviors like asking for help or fixing mistakes.
Open → 2610.26703v1