Handling Design Tasks: Effects of Music on Mood and Task Performance

Listening to music at work seems to be the habit of many designers. As they believe that music can stimulate creativity and help them concentrate. Design tasks mainly fall into two categories: repetitive tasks such as image matting and creative tasks such as brainstorming. In order to study how different types of music actually impact work performance, participants were asked to perform image-matting and brainstorming under three different experimental background conditions (no music, light music, and hard music). Physiological indexes such as heart rate and GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) were recorded to measure the influence of music on mood. Task results were carefully examined to indicate how music impacts task performance. Our analysis reveals that listening to music would lower task performance for repetitive task as well as creative task, and hard music is even worse than light music. However, listening to music doesn't seem to impact anxiety, arousal or mental effort. Plus, arousal improves when competing creative design tasks compared with repetitive design tasks.