Using Physiological Measures to Evaluate User Experience of Mobile Applications

Measurements of user experience (UX) in traditional human-computer interaction studies mostly rely on task performance and self-report data. Recent research has showed that physiological measures are good indicators of cognitive involvement and emotional arousal and are suggested being used as a complementary measure of UX. This paper reports a preliminary study to examine the possibility of including physiological measures in the UX evaluation process. In the experiment, participants' physiological responses, task performance and self-report data were collected and analyzed. It was found that physiological measures varied with task performance, as participants showed greater galvanic skin response (GSR) change in the failed tasks than that in the successful tasks. In addition, correlations were found between GSR and self-report data of user experience. The results demonstrated the potential value of physiological measures as a data source of user experience evaluation. However, further investigations involving variations in tasks and individual difference are required.