


Intrusive data collection techniques, such as “think-aloud” descriptions, interfere with the game-playing experience and posttest questionnaires fail to recapture all of the nuances of the playing experience ( Mandryk and Inkpen, 2004). However, the fast-paced nature of these games limits the applicability of many techniques. As anyone who has played video games knows, players can become excited while driving race cars, hunting aliens, or playing basketball on the computer. Interaction with computer games is a natural topic for physiological data. 1 BVP and GSR responses were used to develop models that could distinguish between frustrating and nonfrustrating states ( Scheirer et al., 2002). As participants were being timed and had been offered a reward if they had the fastest task completion times, these delays would presumably cause frustration.
#Galvanic skin response arduino software
Unbeknown to the participants, the game software was rigged to randomly introduce episodes of unresponsiveness. Participants were told that the experimenters were interested in how brightly colored graphics would influence physiological variables in an online game. The experimental design involved a game with several puzzles. Peaks were also correlated with major events that were thought to be cognitively challenging, including reading instructions and competing tasks ( Shi et al., 2007).Īnother study used both galvanic skin response (GSR) and blood-volume pressure (BVP) to measure user frustration in an explicit attempt to develop methods for using multiple sensing technologies. Analysis of specific recordings found GSR peaks to be correlated with stressful or frustrating events, with responses decreasing over time. This was interpreted as providing evidence for the utility of using GSR to indicate cognitive loads. For all three interfaces, the total response increased with task complexity. Initial analysis of data from five participants indicated that average response levels were lowest for the multimodal interface, followed by speech and then gesture interfaces. Participants used gesture-based, speech-based, or multimodal (speech and gesture) interfaces to complete tasks. An examination of some of these studies indicates the common theme of using these techniques to record real-time observations of a task in progress, as opposed to subjective, posttest response.Ī study of cognitive load and multimodal interfaces used three different traffic control interfaces with three different task complexity levels to investigate the possibility of using galvanic skin response (GSR) to measure cognitive load. Harry Hochheiser, in Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction (Second Edition), 2017 13.6 Examplesĭespite the challenges, numerous HCI researchers have used physiological data to observe user interactions in ways that would not otherwise be possible.
