Using fNIRS in usability testing: understanding the effect of web form layout on mental workload

Lukanov, Kristiyan Emilov; Maior, Horia A.; Wilson, Max L.

Abstract

Amongst the many tasks in our lives, we encounter web forms on a regular basis, whether they are mundane like registering for a website, or complex and important like tax returns. There are many aspects of Usability, but one concern for user interfaces is to reduce mental workload and error rates. Whilst most assessment of mental workload is subjective and retrospective reporting by users, we examine the potential of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) as a tool for objectively and concurrently measuring mental workload during usability testing. We use this technology to evaluate the design of three different form layouts for a car insurance claim process, and show that a form divided into subforms increases mental workload, contrary to our expectations. We conclude that fNIRS is highly suitable for objectively examining mental workload during usability testing, and will therefore be able to provide more detailed insight than summative retrospective assessments. Further, for the fNIRS community, we show that the technology can easily move beyond typical psychology tasks, and be used for more natural study tasks.

Citation

Lukanov, K. E., Maior, H. A., & Wilson, M. L. (2016). Using fNIRS in usability testing: understanding the effect of web form layout on mental workload

• Conference Name: Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
• End Date: May 13, 2016
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jan 22, 2016
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Mental workload; web forms; usability; functional near-infrared spectroscopy; fNIRS
• Public URL: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/31334
• Publisher URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2858036.2858236
• Additional Information: © ACM 2016. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 34th Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'16), http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858236 ; ; ISBN 9781450333627