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TY - GEN ID - cogprints4429 UR - http://cogprints.org/4429/ A1 - Muter, Paul A1 - Furedy, J.J. A1 - Vincent, A. A1 - Pelcowitz, T. Y1 - 1993/// N2 - Psychophysiological measures, which are not contaminated by demand characteristics, are potentially useful for improving systems and for examining psychological processes in human-computer interaction. In this study we report the use of minute-by-minute scored heart-rate (HR) and skin-conductance level (SCL) in a 25-subject experiment. Each subject was presented with two simulated bank-transaction tasks, one user-friendly and the other user-hostile. To check whether any differences were due simply to sheer difficulty, easy (forward digit-span) and hard (backward digit-span) memory tasks were presented to all subjects. The HR was higher during the computer (problem-solving) tasks than the memory tasks, but was unaffected by task difficulty, whereas SCL was uniquely elevated during the hard (user-hostile) computer task. The HR result is interpreted as reflecting parasympathetic withdrawal, while the SCL result suggests that the user-hostile software produced sympathetic excitation of the sort associated with the fight-or-flight reaction. SCL may serve as a good measure of user-friendliness. PB - Computers in Human Behavior KW - usability KW - psychophysiology TI - User-hostile systems and patterns of psychophysiological activity SP - 105 AV - public EP - 111 ER -