Frustration: Still a Common User Experience

Morten Hertzum, Kasper Hornbæk

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

When computers unexpectedly delay or thwart goal attainment, frustration ensues. The central studies of the extent, content, and impact of such frustration were done more than 15 years ago. We revisit this issue after computers have become more mature and computer use is more extensive. To this end, we had 234 crowdsourced participants log the frustrating episodes they experienced with their computers during one hour of computer use. The average time lost due to frustrating episodes was between 11% and 20% of the one-hour period. Though this is less time lost than in the earlier studies, frustration remains a common user experience. While shorter, the median level of frustration during the episodes was high (7 on a 9-point scale). The frustration level correlated with task importance and time lost but was unaffected by computer experience and largely unaffected by computer self-efficacy. In addition, participants indicated that 84% of the episodes had happened before, that 87% could happen again, and that they were unable to resolve 26% of the episodes. This high rate of recurrence and lack of control likely added to the frustration level. The episodes spanned various issues pertaining to performance (49%), usability (36%), and utility (16%).

Original languageEnglish
Article number42
JournalACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
Volume30
Issue number3
Number of pages26
ISSN1073-0516
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Keywords

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

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