We are wasting up to 20 percent of our time on computer problems
Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction between 11 and 20 per cent of the time

Date:
June 29, 2023
Source:
University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science
Summary:
Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they
still malfunction between 11 and 20 per cent of the time, a new
study concludes. The researchers behind the study therefore find
that there are major gains to be achieved for society by rethinking
the systems and involving users more in their development.


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Even though our computers are now better than 15 years ago, they still malfunction between 11 and 20 per cent of the time, a new study from
the University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University concludes. The
researchers behind the study therefore find that there are major gains
to be achieved for society by rethinking the systems and involving users
more in their development.

An endlessly rotating beach ball, a program that crashes without
saving data or systems that require illogical procedures or simply do
not work. Unfortunately, struggling with computers is still a familiar situation for most of us. Tearing your hair out over computers that do not
work remains very common among users, according to new Danish research.

In fact, so much that, on average, we waste between 11 and 20 per cent
of our time in front of our computers on systems that do not work or
that are so difficult to understand that we cannot perform the task we
want to. And this is far from being good enough, says Professor Kasper Hornbaek, one of the researchers behind the study.

"It's incredible that the figure is so high. However, most people
experience frustration when using computers and can tell a horror story
about an important PowerPoint presentation that was not saved or a system
that crashed at a critical moment. Everyone knows that it is difficult
to create IT systems that match people's needs, but the figure should be
much lower, and one thing that it shows is that ordinary people aren't
involved enough when the systems are developed," he says.

Professor Morten Hertzum, the other researcher behind the study,
emphasises that most frustrations are experienced in connection with
the performance of completely ordinary tasks.

"The frustrations are not due to people using their computers for
something highly advanced, but because they experience problems in their performance of everyday tasks. This makes it easier to involve users in identifying problems.

But it also means that problems that are not identified and solved will probably frustrate a large number of users," says Morten Hertzum.

The problems are only too recognisable To examine this issue, the
researchers have been assisted by 234 participants who spend between
six and eight hours in front of a computer in their day-to- day work.

In one hour, the researchers told them to report the situations in which
the computer would not work properly, or where the participants were
frustrated about not being able to perform the task they wanted.

The problems most often experienced by the participants included that:
"the system was slow," "the system froze temporarily," "the system
crashed," "it is difficult to find things." The participants had
backgrounds such as student, accountant, consultant, but several of them actually worked in the IT industry.

"A number of the participants in the survey were IT professionals,
while most of the other participants were highly competent IT and
computer users.

Nevertheless, they encountered these problems, and it turns out that
this involves some fundamental functions," says Kasper Hornbaek.

The participants in the survey also responded that 84 per cent of the
episodes had occurred before and that 87 per cent of the episodes could
happen again.

And, according to Kasper Hornbaek, we are having the same fundamental
problems today that we had 15-20 years ago.

"The two biggest categories of problems are still about insufficient performance and lack of user-friendliness," he says.

Morten Hertzum adds: "Our technology can do more today, and it has also
become better, but, at the same time, we expect more from it. Even
though downloads are faster now, they are often still experienced as frustratingly slow. " 88 per cent use a computer at work According
to Statistics Denmark, 88 per cent of Danes used computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets or other mobile devices at work in 2018. In this
context, the new study indicates that a half to a whole day of a normal
working week may be wasted on computer problems.

"There is a lot of productivity lost in workplaces throughout Denmark
because people are unable to perform their ordinary work because the
computer is not running as it should. It also causes a lot of frustrations
for the individual user," says Kasper Hornbaek.

This means that there are major benefits to be gained for society if we experienced fewer problems in front of our computers. According to Kasper Hornbaek, the gains can, for example, be achieved if more resources are invested in rethinking how faults are presented to us on the computer.

"Part of the solution may be to shield us from knowing that the computer
is working to solve a problem. In reality, there is no reason why we need
to look at an incomprehensible box with commands or a frozen computer. The computer could easily solve the problems without displaying this, while
it provided a back-up version of the system for us, so that we could
continue to work with our tasks undisturbed," says Kasper Hornbaek.

At the same time, IT developers should involve the users even more when designing the systems to make them as easy to use -- and understand --
as possible. For, according to the researcher, there are no poor IT users,
only poor systems.

"When we're all surrounded by IT systems that we're cursing, it's very
healthy to ascertain that it's probably not the users that are the
problem, but those who make the systems. The study clearly shows that
there is still much room for improvement, and we therefore hope that it
can create more focus on making more user-friendly systems in the future," concludes Kasper Hornbaek.

Facts:
* 234 participants, aged 10-69, participated in the survey.

* The majority of the participants spent between 6-8 hours a day
in front
of a computer.

* The participants reported an average of one computer problem or
frustration per hour.

* The participants in the survey also responded that 84 per cent
of the
episodes had occurred before and that 87 per cent of the episodes
could happen again.

* A large part of the problems concerned slow systems, systems that
did not
respond or crashed.

* The researchers have created a new version of a previous study
conducted
15 years ago, which showed that the participants wasted as much
as 40-50 per cent of their time on frustrations about the computer.

* The study has been conducted by Morten Hertzum from Roskilde
University
and Kasper Hornbaek from the University of Copenhagen.

* RELATED_TOPICS
o Computers_&_Math
# Computer_Science # Distributed_Computing #
Artificial_Intelligence # Communications #
Information_Technology # Computers_and_Internet #
Neural_Interfaces # Computer_Programming
* RELATED_TERMS
o Algebraic_geometry o Supercomputer o Quantum_computer
o Mathematics o Economic_growth o Macroeconomics o
Information_and_communication_technologies o Computer_animation

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by University_of_Copenhagen_-_Faculty_of_Science. Note: Content may be
edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Morten Hertzum, Kasper Hornbaek. Frustration: Still a Common User
Experience. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 2023;
30 (3): 1 DOI: 10.1145/3582432 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230629125723.htm

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