Análise quantitativa e qualitativa da experiência do usuário em confiabilidade de sistemas operacionais

Abstract

As a consequence of the increasing importance of software in the daily routines of our modern society, its failures can have a huge impact on the user experience. Given that most of user applications depends on an operating system (OS) to execute, in practical terms, an OS with low reliability, experiencing frequent failures, has a direct impact on the user experience when considering the computer system as a whole. Understanding the effects of OS failures on user satisfaction is an important requirement for developing reliable operating systems from the user's point of view, not just taking into account quantitative metrics as has been the norm in the literature. Firstly, we applied an online questionnaire to 121 participants and, later, a face-to-face experiment was carried out with 120 participants using a software tool capable of simulating failures in kernel subsystems, OS applications, and OS services. The statistical evidence found in the results showed that the user experience is more affected by the consequence of the failure event than by the type of fault experienced by the user. The results indicate that the level of user tolerance for OS failure as well as the level of confidence in its functioning depends on different factors, such as the context in which the user is inserted at the moment of failure and the consequence of the failure . These two factors were the ones that most impacted the quality user experience (QoE). In addition, it was observed that the expectation of solving the problem and also the familiarity with the failure event positively affected the participants' QoE. This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the impact caused by OS failures in the user's QoE, aiming to improve the reliability modeling of the future operating system, adding users' perceptions of reliability rather than just quality of service (QoS) elements.