Frustration: Still a Common User Experience

Author

MORTEN HERTZUM, KASPER HORNBÆK, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 2023

Keywords

Frustration, time lost, computer self-efficacy, user experience

WHAT

  • A web-based logging tool collects frustrations from each of the 234 users during one hour of computer use

WHY

  • only one replication

  • much has changed over the past fifteen years regarding technology and its use

  • Too many reports inflates the frequency of frustrations

  • Participants limitation

HOW

  • Study design

    • estimating the percentage of time that participants experience frustration

    • recruited participants through crowd-sourcing

    • event-based monitoring

    • log frustrations for one hour

    • Aimming: getting participants at a time that was typical of their work with computers

  • Participants

    • 306 participants

    • recruited from the crowd-work website Prolific

  • Data collection

    • Prelogging Questions

      • demographics

      • how many hours a day they used computers

      • computer self-efficacy

      • describe what a frustrating episode was to them

    • Logging of Frustrations

      • frustration reports

    • Postlogging Questions

      • to learn whether frustrations had effects beyond the individual episode

  • Procedure

    • opened a webpage with a self-report tool

    • reminded if no registration in 10 minutes

  • Data Analysis

    • 3 quality check

    • open card sorting

      • category of frustrations experienced during the reporting period

      • how the participants resolved the incidents

      • what the participants in general considered a frustrating episode with computers

      • descriptions of the participants’ occupation

Results

  • Participant Profile

    • Occupation, operating system, browser, screen resolution, “the computer you normally use”

  • Time Lost

    • 86 (37%) participants report no frustrating incidents

    • Age matters

    • between 6.63 and 12.15 minutes to frustration per hour

  • Task Importance and Level of Frustration

    • median level 7

    • With increasing task importance, the participants experienced a higher level offrustration

  • How did Participants Resolve the Frustrations?

    • 74% of the frustrating incidents can be solved

    • to resolve an incident tempered the frustration

    • resolving an incident by taking another approach was as frustrating as being unable to resolve it

  • What were Participants Frustrated About?

    • The median frustration level was above the midpoint of the scale for 20 (80%) of the categories

    • 3 most frequent frustration: slow, froze, or crashed

    • Classification: performance, utility, and usability

  • How Did Participants Construe Computer Frustration?

    • delayed or thwarted in attaining their goals

    • the unexpectedness concerned deviations from normal operations

    • out of control

    • 3 most frequently mentioned dimensions: slow/unresponsive systems, hardware issues, and computer crashes

Discussion

  • Extent and Level of Frustration

  • Causes of Frustration

  • Consequences of Frustrating Incidents

  • Implications

  • Limitations