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The Illusion of Performance: The Effect of Phantom Display Refresh Rates on User Expectations and Reaction Times

Authors:

Christopher Katins,

Thomas KoschAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Article No.: 317, Pages 1 - 6

https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650875

Published: 11 May 2024 Publication History

Abstract

User expectations impact the evaluation of new interactive systems. Increased expectations may enhance the perceived effectiveness of interfaces in user studies, similar to a placebo effect observed in medical studies. To showcase the placebo effect, we conducted a user study with 18 participants who performed a target selection reaction time test with two different display refresh rates. Participants saw a stated screen refresh rate before every condition, which corresponded to the true refresh rate only in half of the conditions and was lower or higher in the other half. Results revealed successful priming, as participants believed in superior or inferior performance based on the narrative despite using the opposite refresh rate. Post-experiment questionnaires confirmed participants still held onto the initial narrative. Interestingly, the objective performance remained unchanged between both refresh rates. We discuss how study narratives influence subjective measures and suggest strategies to mitigate placebo effects in user-centered study designs.

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Cited By

Sänger MDe Mecquenem NLewińska KBountris VLehmann FLeser UKosch T(2024)A qualitative assessment of using ChatGPT as large language model for scientific workflow developmentGigaScience10.1093/gigascience/giae03013Online publication date: 19-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giae030

Index Terms

The Illusion of Performance: The Effect of Phantom Display Refresh Rates on User Expectations and Reaction Times
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI EA '24: Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2024

4761 pages

ISBN:9798400703317

DOI:10.1145/3613905

Editors:
Florian Floyd Mueller
Monash University
,
Penny Kyburz
The Australian National University
,
Julie R. Williamson
University of Glasgow
,
Corina Sas
Lancaster University

Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Published: 11 May 2024

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CHI '24: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 11 - 16, 2024

HI, Honolulu, USA

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Cited By

Sänger MDe Mecquenem NLewińska KBountris VLehmann FLeser UKosch T(2024)A qualitative assessment of using ChatGPT as large language model for scientific workflow developmentGigaScience10.1093/gigascience/giae03013Online publication date: 19-Jun-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giae030

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