In this paper we present a framework built upon a trace-based approach for users experience analysis and management. Traces of interactions between a user and the computer system are collected and stored in a trace-based system (TBS). Once collected, the TBS allows transformation of these traces, as a basic operations to manipulate them. This system proved to be helpful in order to carry interactive knowledge discovery process, which consists in analysing traces along different dimensions in order to find relevant patterns. We present two application domains which exemplify this approach. First in musical analysis, the trace based system serves as a container of the analyst's work and various analysis tools assist the analyst in their work. Second in active video reading, computer-mediated users activity are traced and analyzed in order to study the evolution of their practices over time.