Emotional user experience: Traits, events, and states

• Individual differences in emotional responses in human–technology interaction were investigated.
• Competence is affected by individual differences in planful problem solving trait.
• Frustration is affected by individual differences in frustration tendency trait.
• Self-confidence of the user affects emotional user experience.

Emotional experience has become an important topic in human–technology interaction research and design. Nevertheless, such research and design often lacks a proper explanatory basis and methodologically robust operationalisation. In this article, a conceptualisation of emotional user experience is formulated based on the appraisal theory of emotion, where the goal congruence of the interaction events and the task-independent individual traits are thought to underlie the user′s emotional response. A laboratory study with N=50 participants conducting ordinary computer tasks is reported. The results suggest that subjective emotional experience depends on a number of factors relating to individual differences in coping and task events. Emotional user experience, as analysed according to a competence–frustration model of emotion, is dependent on the user׳s technological problem-solving tendency, frustration tendency, pre-task self-confidence, and task performance.