OCCURRENCE OF FRUSTRATION IN HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION: THE AFFECT OF INTERRUPTING COGNITIVE FLOW

Abstract

Despite a growing awareness of the importance of emotion, HCI has emphasized the severity of usability incidents as the best method towards creating an enjoyable experience. This study collected the remembered frustrating incidents with technology of 66 participants (132 incidents). Incidents were then coded into one of the five high-level categories of the User Action Framework, a schema for classifying incidents in relation to their occurrence in the interaction cycle. It was found that the majority of remembered frustrating incidents occur in the Outcome phase, which addresses issues with the system?s internal response to the user?s actions. This is in contrast to where most usability issues occur, in the Translation phase, which addresses issues with the user translating intentions into plans for physical actions. In addition it was found that remembered Outcome incidents are more often low priority usability incidents whereas remembered incidents in Translation are usually high priority usability problems. Finally, those incidents remembered in the Outcome phase are primarily incidents that interrupt cognitive flow.