The Stressful Experience of Self-Service Technology Use during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The next speakers in this AoIR 2022 session are Lisa Waldenburger and Jeffrey Wimmer. They begin by noting the rise in digital stress – at work, at home, and in public spaces –, and their project is designed to explore the experience of and coping mechanisms for such digital stress by users. Such stress is often caused by a self-diagnosed lack of media literacy, especially as self-service technologies come to substitute for previously non-digital and interpersonal interactions; these technologies contribute to economic rationalisation and social exclusion especially for non-tech-savvy and older people.

These moves, and their accompanying stresses, were exacerbated in the context of COVID-19: the pandemic further reduced interpersonal interactions and conversations. The project explored this through 160 participant observations (which in itself was difficult in the context of COVID-19), and identified stress in the form of reactions, approaches to technology use, gestures and facial expressions, and use of other media. It examined such experiences on a matrix from mandatory to optional, and established to new self-service technology use.

Case examples included the use of self-checkout aisles in supermarkets (technologies which are not one’s own), and the use of personal devices at vaccination checkpoints (e.g. even entering shops). Observations from these cases show that self-service technologies are not inherently stressful, but that digital stress is influenced by their mandatory or optional use; by the learning abilities of their users (the colonisation of their lifeworlds); and by the exclusion of others with low digital literacies, skills, and resources; they can also be understood as a catalyst for the amplification of non-digital stress. It will be interesting to see how much the COVID-19 pandemic has socialised us into their uses.