Paper Reading - Frustration:Still a Common User Experience
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