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136 CHAPTER 6 Diaries

much time we lose due to frustrations or task switching, time diaries are often the
prevailing type of diary used in HCI research. The sidebar on “time diaries to study
user frustration” provides an example.

TIME DIARIES TO STUDY USER FRUSTRATION
Time diaries have been used in researching the presence of frustration among
users interacting with computers. A series of research studies examined what
frustrates users while using computers, how they respond to those frustrations,
and how it impacts on the users' time. One study focused on 111 university
students and their friends; one study focused on 50 workplace users; and a third
on 100 blind users on the web (Ceaparu et al., 2004; Lazar et al., 2006, 2007).
The methodology was essentially the same for all three studies: users were
asked to fill out a time diary of their computer usage over a given amount of
time (such as a few hours). At the beginning and end of their usage session on
the computer, the users were asked to record their mood by answering a series
of questions. The users were requested to fill out a “frustration experience
form” each time during the session that they felt frustrated, with no minimum
or maximum number of forms. Throughout the process, the time of day was
recorded by users, which helped both to validate the quality of the data and to
ascertain how much time was lost due to these frustration experiences.
There are a number of different findings from these studies relating to causes
of frustration and how users responded to the frustrations. One of the most
interesting findings was how much time was lost due to frustrating situations. In
the study of the student users, 38%–43% of the time spent on the computer was
lost due to frustrating experiences. In the study of workplace users, 42.7% of
time on the computer was lost due to frustrating experiences. In the study of blind
users, 30.4% of time on the computer was lost due to frustrating experiences.
Below is the Frustration experience form (time diary) from Ceaparu et al. (2004).
Frustrating Experience
Please fill out this form for each frustrating experience that you encounter
while using your computer during the reporting session. This should include
both major problems such as computer or application crashes, and minor issues
such as a program not responding the way that you need it to. Anything which
frustrates you should be recorded.
1. What were you trying to do?
2. On a scale of 1 (not very important) to 9 (very important), how important
was this task to you?
Not very important 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Very Important
3. What software or program did the problem occur in? If the problem was
the computer system, please check the program that you were using when
it occurred (check all that apply).