Stress in Augmented Reality Human Computer Interfaces

Abstract

The ability of a user to control their attention within an Augmented Reality (AR) Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is an unreliable quality for the design of an AR system. An alternative design approach is to adopt adaptive HCIs that adapt to specific user needs. One user need is to manage stress levels. Stress is an issue because it affects user performance. Often users are not aware of their stress levels, therefore a User Interface (UI) that independently identifies stress and automatically adapts to it would be very beneficial. The present study examines the research questions: how would a UI adapt to stress and what would be the utility of such be? The study included both descriptive and experimental elements. The descriptive element reasons from fundamental neuroscience and psychology that stress is an important factor in user performance and that a UI that reduced excessive stress would have utility, namely it would enable improved user performance. The experimental element proved a means to measure stress via a proxy. The experiment utilized a situation demanding an AR UI, that is both real world and computer created data were required to complete the required tasks: one “performance” task for which user performance mattered and a “distraction” task to ensure the user’s cognitive engagement was saturated. The experiment demonstrated that stress (measured by proxy) is directly correlated to stimuli complexity of the AR UI and that user performance in an AR UI is inversely correlated to stress. These facts together provide a strong indication that an AR UI that adapts to the stress proxy would provide significant value to the user.