What users say when no one asks: an undergraduate thesis mines Play Store reviews for usability signals
Augusto Moreno Vilarins Cardoso da Silva and Ícaro Pereira de Oliveira defended at FCTE/UnB an undergraduate thesis designing a semi-automated process to extract usability signals from user comments on the Google Play Store.
Brasília, November 16, 2021
Every app team asks for feedback. Few actually read what users write — not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t. Thousands of reviews pour in every week for any moderately popular app, and the cost of line-by-line reading becomes a barrier. This is the barrier that Augusto Moreno Vilarins Cardoso da Silva and Ícaro Pereira de Oliveira tear down in the thesis defended in November 2021, advised by Prof. Cristiane Soares Ramos .
The work proposes a semi-automated process to extract, from Play Store comments, relevant usability signals about the applications. In other words: it uses natural language processing and text mining to turn what was an ocean of opinions into organized sets of actionable indicators. The result matters both to teams that already treat feedback as raw material and to teams that recognize its value but haven’t figured out how to consume it.
By speaking to software quality , the thesis offers a practical route: instead of waiting for formal usability studies, tap into the spontaneous feedback already published — if we know how to organize it.
The full text — written in Portuguese — is available at the UnB Undergraduate Theses Digital Library.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions.