User experience evaluation through the brain's electrical activity

Abstract

A novel system for measuring the user experience of any user interface by measuring the feedback directly from the brain through Electroencephalography (EEG) is described. We developed an application that records data for different emotions of the user while using any interface and visualises the data for any interval during the task, as well as presenting various statistics and insight about the data. The application also provides the points of mouse movement on any interface as different coloured dots, where the colour represents the mental load at those points. This makes it easier to identify the user experience based on emotions at exact points on the user interface. In experiments, the brain activity of participants was recorded while they performed tasks on both a well-designed and poorly designed user interface. Screen and mouse cursor position were recorded, along with the values of several facial expressions and emotions extracted from the EEG. Users were interviewed after the study to share their experiences. For each study session analysis was done by comparing EEG, screen recording and interview data. Results showed that frustration, furrow and excitement values reflect user experience.