Measuring emotional valence to understand the user's experience of software

  • Authors:
  • Richard L. Hazlett;Joey Benedek

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Meyer 144, 600 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA and Hazlett Research, 2045 York Road, Baltim ...;Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, USA

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

This paper reports on the results of two studies that used facial electromyography (EMG) measures combined with verbal and performance measures to provide feedback in the software design process on the user's emotional state. The first study assessed 16 participant's emotional responses while they passively viewed mock ups of proposed new operating system features. The second study measured the emotional responses of 15 participants while they actively used one of two versions of a media player. This multimodal assessment method was able to provide a sensitive measure of the desirability of the proposed software features, and a measure of emotional tension and mental effort expended in the interactive tasks.