How an emotion matrix can help test software usability

The importance of emotions in usability testing is well known, but the focus is often on the emotions that users experience during and after using the software. Emotions experienced by the user before using the program can play an even greater role in usability, so you should not forget about them.

Let's try to find and consider some of these emotions before your product hits the virtual shelves.

This concept did not come to me at all in the process of working on another project for a client, as is usually the case. I was sitting on the bus, I was tired (it was the end of the working day) and I was annoyed because the bus was packed, and I was stepped on and pushed in the aisle. I was lucky that it was not far to go to the house, even if it was not comforting.

I had to urgently go to an online auction, because there was one thing that I had my eye on for a long time, and the auction that was about to end. As a rule, I make the maximum bid long before the end of the auction and it is convenient for me that I may not receive the goods; I like when automation at an auction can stop me from spending too much. However, this time I really wanted this thing.
Taking into account all my emotions and feelings, as well as adding to this list the alarm about the auction, it is clear that I was, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. In such situations, I am always very tense.
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It was about ten minutes before the end of the auction, and I watched as the price gradually increased. I must say, the need to press the "Update" button was very annoying. A few minutes before the end, I began to bid. The process of placing a bid and confirmation was not so much confusing, but, nevertheless, quite difficult. Probably, some of the problems were related to the slow speed of the 3G Internet, however, it seems to me that some steps were still unnecessary there.

A minute before the finale, I left, because there were a lot of distractions: the bus was shaky, the passenger beside me with my elbow ribs, I was tired, my nerves were at the limit, and the general bidding process was tiresome. I decided that this thing is just not worth it.

Thinking about it later, I found it to be quite strange, that one minute before the end I left everything. But at that moment everything that happened to me was quite sufficient for me to stop trading.

Is this a common or rare situation? I do not think that it is rare, although I admit that I do not have reliable data confirming this.
All the emotions and feelings that I experienced were not taken into account by developers and designers, but they influenced me in the bidding process. Would I leave the auction if their process was simpler? I may not be sure about that for sure, but it would certainly have influenced my decision.

So, how should such an experience change my opinion (and yours as well) on emotions in usability testing?

Have you ever thought about what users will feel when using your software in an unusual environment? Of course, yes, if you are an interface designer, what about those who test it?

Throughout my career, I have seen many different emotional reactions during testing and usability assessment, and I learned to understand the potential consequences of these reactions. And only recently I realized the importance of the emotions that the user experiences before using the program, as well as those that the user can receive at the time of using the product.

Without a doubt, you can get a lot of interesting information from a user who is angry using your program, but what if he is angry before using it? How will this affect usage? Will this lower his Goodwill Reservoir , will the way he interacts with the software changes? For example, a user may tap the device’s screen, rather than touch it.

We introduce a matrix of emotions for usability

The matrix of emotions for usability is a tool that I began to use to record the most common emotions that users may experience when they start using a software product that I test. This tool is easy to understand, but harder to use than it seems at first glance.

Concept

The first part of the matrix lists the applications and, if there is a logical way to divide the applications, their functional parts, as well as the potential emotions that these applications and functional parts can cause. The second part goes a little further and shows the places of the intended use of the application and the emotions that these places can cause the user.

Combine both matrices and you have a lot of potential emotions that your user can feel before and during the use of your software product.

For example, using the upper matrix, we noted that the increase in the price of one item makes the user excited, nervous, anxious and gives them the feeling that they hurried. If the user was sitting on the bus during the bidding process, he would enter into the bidding process feeling angry (he hates buses), he may be nervous or feel anxiety (the crowd is not his favorite thing), he may be tired (he had a long day office). In general, you yourself understand that an application with poor usability can push a person “over the edge”.

The trick is to identify the most common emotions that are relevant to the context of using your software product. For example, you could imagine that the “alarming / nervous” characteristic is quite logical for a user who will use the emergency medical program. It would be extremely important to check how users interact with similar software while in critical situations. The manual of such a software product, for example, hints or help text should be very clear, and its use should be quick, easy and accurate.

So, as is customary in usability, you need to think about the demographics of your users. As your software grows, and I hope it gets better, you can easily add your matrices.

The hard part.

How do you evoke emotions? Even, let me rephrase: how to cause potentially negative emotions in a professional environment when testing usability? If you now imagine a picture, when a boxer comes into the ring and the coach slaps him on the cheeks to make him angry, then alas, you are very far from the truth. If only it were that simple.

To the question of what is needed in order to evoke certain emotions, I cannot answer, but I can say that it is very dangerous. Beating the tester in the face before he sits down to check your software is definitely not what you need to do. The potential benefits of improved usability will not pay you back.

There is, of course, the potential to test and evaluate users in real life. If possible, you could take the bus with the users or join them in the cafe while they use your product. This can be a great way to capture emotions and reactions to them, but is probably difficult to implement.

Instead, you can use past experience to evaluate in this situation; any past user experience of your software product. Do you have a user who has already experienced some specific emotion needed to test a product? Did you notice any differences in how he used the software, so that it could be linked to his emotions? If so, then you need to remember these moments and use this knowledge in order to perform usability testing with these emotions in mind.

For example, I noticed that very frustrated users cannot keep themselves waiting long between mouse clicks. They tend to hold the key down or click on it at an increasing rate until a visual change is apparent to them. Maybe it will be a good option to add a kind of visual display at the moment when the program is busy with something, to avoid falling from multiple mouse clicks? If your users are mostly people with a high level of frustration, then perhaps this is a good move.

This is another argument in favor of this technique: would you be able to detect drops from multiple mouse clicks without using a matrix of emotions?