The impact of GUI style on employee’s productivity performance

Abstract

This thesis details a prospect study, focusing on using GUI as a type of interface to enhance user experience and help HR Managers create a more conducive workplace to increase employee productivity. Analysis of the available empirical and theoretical evidence (Vallerio, Lin Zhong and Jha, 2006) strongly suggests that although GUI usability and functionality have been studied and compared to other types of interfaces (e.g., CLI), there is limited availability of evidence concerning importance of GUI in relation to the user experience. Therefore, the proposed study will evaluate the importance of GUI and user experience. A primary data-based mixed-method research will be performed to compare the impact on user experience when using GUI and CLI; in addition to that, the impact of GUI on user productivity will be studied. The study will be based on a sample of 20 participants (10 novice, and 10 experts) and an experimental design type of study will be performed, followed by an open-end questionnaire. The researcher will use Goals, operations, methods and selection rules (GOMS) and hierarchical task analysis (HTA) to collect and organise quantitative data. Quantitative data will be studied using inferential and descriptive statistics; qualitative (observation-derived) data will be analysed using thematic analysis which involves coding of qualitative data by extracting themes from text. Key words: GUI, user experience and GUI, interface functionality and user productivity