TY - GEN
T1 - Measuring the effect of think aloud protocols on workload using fNIRS
AU - Pike, Matthew
AU - Maior, Horia A.
AU - Porcheron, Martin
AU - Sharples, Sarah
AU - Wilson, Max L.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - The Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) is a verbalisation technique widely employed in HCI user studies to give insight into user experience, yet little work has explored the impact that TAPs have on participants during user studies. This paper utilises a brain sensing technique, fNIRS, to observe the effect that TAPs have on participants. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a brain sensing technology that offers the potential to provide continuous, detailed insight into brain activity, enabling an objective view of cognitive processes during complex tasks. Participants were asked to perform a mathematical task under 4 conditions: Nonsense verbalisations, passive concurrent think aloud protocol, invasive concurrent think aloud protocol, and a baseline of silence. Subjective ratings and performance measures were collected during the study. Our results provide a novel view into the effect that different forms of verbalisation have on workload during tasks. Further, the results provide a means for estimating the effect of spoken artefacts when measuring workload, which is another step towards our goal of proactively involving fNIRS analysis in ecologically valid user studies.
AB - The Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) is a verbalisation technique widely employed in HCI user studies to give insight into user experience, yet little work has explored the impact that TAPs have on participants during user studies. This paper utilises a brain sensing technique, fNIRS, to observe the effect that TAPs have on participants. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a brain sensing technology that offers the potential to provide continuous, detailed insight into brain activity, enabling an objective view of cognitive processes during complex tasks. Participants were asked to perform a mathematical task under 4 conditions: Nonsense verbalisations, passive concurrent think aloud protocol, invasive concurrent think aloud protocol, and a baseline of silence. Subjective ratings and performance measures were collected during the study. Our results provide a novel view into the effect that different forms of verbalisation have on workload during tasks. Further, the results provide a means for estimating the effect of spoken artefacts when measuring workload, which is another step towards our goal of proactively involving fNIRS analysis in ecologically valid user studies.
KW - BCI
KW - FNIRS
KW - Functional near-infrared spectroscopy
KW - HCI
KW - Human cognition
KW - Think Aloud Protocol
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84900429719&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2556288.2556974
DO - 10.1145/2556288.2556974
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84900429719
SN - 9781450324731
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
SP - 3807
EP - 3816
BT - CHI 2014
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2014
Y2 - 26 April 2014 through 1 May 2014
ER -