Emotional Testing on Facebook's User Experience

Abstract

This study aims at understanding how a user's emotions fluctuate when undertaking certain tasks on a social media platform such as Facebook or other software products which may have emotional effects on its user. Specifically, we explored the difference in the usability aspect of Facebook concerning frequent and new Facebook users. The study involves a qualitative study on eighteen participants, nine of whom were Facebook users and nine non-Facebook users who had never used Facebook before participating in this study. During the testing procedure, users were asked to complete several tasks on Facebook, while the electrophysiological activity of their brain was recorded using an EEG (electroencephalogram) acquisition system. Certainly, this study can be applied to any software product, before its release, to improve its user interface by acquiring insight into how user-friendly it is for new users when compared to frequent users. Additionally, a correlation in user friendliness between new users and frequent users is investigated. Furthermore, the study will help us discern which parts of the brain had the most significant difference between groups and discuss the motives behind an individual's emotional state, concerning user experience. Based on the analysis of the power spectrum of the characteristic brain waves, this research establishes that there is a substantial statistical difference between new and frequent Facebook users. Also, it resulted that there is a significant difference between the central, temporal and occipital lobes of new and frequent users. These results will assist developers in creating optimal and user-friendly software products.