Reasearch Talk: WTFrustration: Towards Measuring Frustration in the User Interface

Abstract

In the evaluation of user interfaces, research has provided a well- established toolbox of usability metrics - measuring success rate, the time a task takes to complete, error rate, etc. However, a user's experience with an interface is not limited to mouse movements and keyboard commands. There are complex emotions that play an intrical role in the user's experience.

Currently, these subjective measures are taken primarily from surveys. However, surveys are problematic and often unreliable. Using brain measurements, we believe we can move towards a more objective measurement of affect, and in particular, frustration. I will share preliminary results from my current work, which moves towards measuring frustration in a user interface using electroencephalography - a non-invasive brain imaging technique.

I will also outline my larger research goals in brain-computer interfaces, drawing from literature in cognitive psychology, visualization, and human-computer interaction. I will briefly describe future projects, including the construction of a GPS that uses map cognition research to adapt to brain activity, and an experiment that explores measuring user preference using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).