Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS

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 effec...

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Main Authors: Pike, Matthew F., Maior, Horia A., Porcheron, Martin, Sharples, Sarah C., Wilson, Max L.
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: ACM 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31323/
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author Pike, Matthew F.
Maior, Horia A.
Porcheron, Martin
Sharples, Sarah C.
Wilson, Max L.
author_facet Pike, Matthew F.
Maior, Horia A.
Porcheron, Martin
Sharples, Sarah C.
Wilson, Max L.
author_sort Pike, Matthew F.
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description 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.
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format Conference or Workshop Item
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institution University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
institution_category Local University
last_indexed 2025-11-14T19:12:03Z
publishDate 2014
publisher ACM
recordtype eprints
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spelling nottingham-313232020-05-04T16:45:50Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31323/ Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS Pike, Matthew F. Maior, Horia A. Porcheron, Martin Sharples, Sarah C. Wilson, Max L. 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. ACM 2014-05-01 Conference or Workshop Item PeerReviewed Pike, Matthew F., Maior, Horia A., Porcheron, Martin, Sharples, Sarah C. and Wilson, Max L. (2014) Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS. In: Proceedings of the 32nd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 26 April - 01 May 2014, Toronto, Canada. bci fnirs functional near-infrared spectroscopy hci human cognition think aloud protocol http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2556288.2556974
spellingShingle bci
fnirs
functional near-infrared spectroscopy
hci
human cognition
think aloud protocol
Pike, Matthew F.
Maior, Horia A.
Porcheron, Martin
Sharples, Sarah C.
Wilson, Max L.
Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title_full Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title_fullStr Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title_full_unstemmed Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title_short Measuring the effect of Think Aloud Protocols on workload using fNIRS
title_sort measuring the effect of think aloud protocols on workload using fnirs
topic bci
fnirs
functional near-infrared spectroscopy
hci
human cognition
think aloud protocol
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31323/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/31323/