Relationship between elements of the usability and emotions reported after use: A Mexican case

Abstract

This paper presents the study of Mexican users of design software to find out if there is any relationship between any of the elements of usability and emotions reported after using said product. A usability test was conducted with inexperienced users who had to perform three tasks in sequential order, under a spoken protocol. After each task, participants responded to the SMEQ mental effort questionnaires, the ASQ satisfaction questionnaire and used the PrEMO tool to report their emotions and feelings while using the software. Subsequently, video recordings of the tests were reviewed to find the level and quality of completed tasks and the number of errors. We found that there is a relationship between some of the usability metrics and the emotions of the users, which is manifested more significantly between subjective usability metrics. The perception of the perceived mental effort turned out to be the element with the biggest relationship to the reporting of emotions, however, this relationship appears to affect both positive and negative emotions and some assumptions point to factors such as the sudden increase in the complexity of a task, which increases the force with which negative emotions are reported. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.