Operationalizing Psychophysiological Correlates of Mobile App User Experience

Abstract

As our mobile, digital lives have continued to grow, the usability of mobile applications has become a central design consideration for the organizations that deliver those applications and the users who consume them. Existing methods for evaluating the usability of new designs and design changes have drawbacks. Digital methods which track user actions and time spent are scalable, but it is difficult to know how a user was feeling when an action was taken, and therefore to know how to improve the experience. Alternatively, qualitative research methods allow designers to interview and observe users in real time to obtain high quality data on app usability. However, these methods are expensive and do not scale well to every product release, demographic, and geography.

‘Real Time UX’ is a phone case that measures several biometric signals available at the user’s hands and uses these data to infer stress, frustration, and engagement in context of app behavior. This insight can then be operationalized to provide automated usability feedback to mobile app designers (slow loop feedback) or it can be integrated directly into the mobile app itself in order to adapt the app functionality to the user (fast loop feedback). This paper presents the motivation for and design of Real Time UX, potential applications of the platform, feedback from users, and opportunities for future work in the space.