Handling Design Tasks: Effects of Music on Mood and Task Performance

Listening to music at work is the habit of many designers, as many believe that music could help them concentrate and stimulate creativity. However, very few studies have focused on how music impacts work performance and psychological status of designers.

Current studies have shown that listening to music at work does affect task performance and mood. Music can increase work quality and efficiency for computer information systems developers, and participants reported positive mood as well as better focus on design [1]. Research on computer word processing shows that music can reduce hand motions while typing by 23.2%, and may thus reduce risks of musculoskeletal disorder caused by typing [2]. For driving tasks, music (even negative ones) can bring induced mood which leads to higher energy rate, and this makes dealing with concurrent tasks while driving easier [3]. However, music is rather a double-edged sword that impacts differently depending on the type of task. Researchers pointed out that while music may have facilitating effects on tasks involving great concentration and attention, for tasks such as comprehension tasks music can be distracting [4]. In a study on reading comprehension of junior high students, performance significantly declined with lyrical music as background [5].

The type of music is a key factor in deciding the influence of music on task completion. Listening to calm music before an examination could reduce physiological measures of anxiety and help achieve better work performance, while listening to harsh music has no such effects and may even increase anxiety [6]. Plus, a study of driving game shows that participants were very negatively affected by high-arousal music selected by experimenter, as they became inaccurate, high-distracted and more anxious, but for low-arousal music the results are more positive [7]. However, light music can also have negative impacts. A study on light music showed that reports of discomfort, earaches and headaches increased and work efficiency for complex mental work significantly decreased with light music as background music [8]. In terms of labor work, a research on 50 machine operators of garment industry showed that relaxation music would hamper work performance and the author suggested that the type of music which doesn’t suit work environment may be the reason [9]. It is therefore important to study how different types of music could act on specific tasks to improve concentration, memory and work efficiency, which could help people gain more knowledge and information in a limited period of time [10, 11].

IDEO studio thinks that music can help people transform from the traditional mode of work which is rather rigorous and meticulous to a more relaxed and creative one [12]. Music evokes the more creative perceptual thinking, thus broadening people’s horizons and stimulating innovation [13]. Also, music promotes creative processes (e.g. group discussion, brainstorming) by reducing the pressure of breaking silence and creating an environment more suitable for communication, cooperation and creative thinking [14]. However, very few studies have focused on how music impacts work performance and psychological status of designers. In this study, we investigated how different types of music influence completion of repetitive/creative design tasks. Our hypotheses are as follows.

• H1: Light music improves work performance of repetitive design tasks while hard music helps with creative design tasks.

• H2: Light music can reduce anxiety and arousal while hard music can increase them when people perform repetitive/creative design tasks.

• H3: Arousal and anxiety increase, and more mental effort is needed for creative design tasks compared with repetitive design tasks.

2.1 Participants

Twenty-two students from the School of Design of Shanghai Jiaotong University participated in the study and 20 copies of valid data (11 female, 9 male) were chosen. The subjects were healthy with no hearing impairment. The age of our participants ranges from 22 to 25, and they have all studied designing for 3 to 5 years.

2.2 Preparations

Repetitive Task and Creative Task.

Design tasks could be mainly divided into repetitive tasks and creative tasks. Image matting was chosen as the representation of repetitive tasks, as it is rather monotonous and tedious and a very common task for designers. We prepared three images of single-line closed shape and ensured that they are of the same difficulty. Participants were asked to use pen tool in Adobe Photoshop CC 2018 to complete image matting, and then fill the shape in the same color as that for the original image. As for creative task, brainstorming was selected as it is a fairly common and important task for designers. Specifically, participants were asked to draw a mind map based on a given word, and this is done by writing a second word that relates to the former.

Music Stimuli.

Two light music and two hard music were picked by researchers. This was done to ensure that when performing a second task under the same music environment (light music for example), our participant would listen to a different song, which help erase impacts of familiarity.

Light music: With “light music” and “soothing” as keywords, the two music with the highest playback amount.

Hard music: Two hot hard music of the previous year.

Selection criteria: BPM for light music does not exceed 72 times per minute, and BPM for hard music is greater than or equal to 92.

Evaluation Index

Task performance. Repetitive task: Accuracy and efficiency of image matting.

Creative task: Number of words and correlation of words.

Physiological measures. Polygraph (Bio-Trace + Software for Nexus-10) was employed to measure heart rate and GSR. Mean heart rate indicates arousal, while heart-rate variability indicates mental effort. GSR demonstrates changes in the degree of anxiety [15].

Subjective test. Assessment questionnaire.

Tool for Statistical Analysis.

IBM SPSS Statistics 21, Python, Bio-Trace + Software for Nexus-10, Natural language analysis tools (Word Relevance).

2.3 Experimental Design

The study employed mixed-subjects design of 2 (repetitive task and creative task) × 3 (no-music, light music, hard music), meaning that each participant has two complete both tasks under three different experimental background conditions. Specific procedure of experiment is as follows:

• Step 1: Listen to instructions carefully.

• Step 2: Practice image-matting to get familiar with the software.

• Step 3: Sit still for 5 min to calm heart rate.

• Step 4: Complete repetitive task in no-music environment.

• Step 5: Take a three-minute break.

• Step 6: Repeat step 2 under light music environment and hard music environment respectively.

• Step 7: Complete creative task, repeat step 2 and step 3.

• Step 8: Fill out assessment questionnaire.

3.1 Task Performance of Repetitive Task

Accuracy and efficiency are the indicators for performance repetitive task. Accuracy is measured by the number of different pixels between work of our participants and the original image, and the calculation was done by python programming. Efficiency is measured by the time taken to complete the task. Average number of different pixels and time-on-task of all the participants under three music environments are shown in Table 1.

We used SPSS to run a one-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance). We set music type the independent variable, and number of different pixels and time on are the dependent variables. The significance level is 0.05. The results show that background music affects the time required for competing image matting (p = 0.042 < 0.05), and the influence on accuracy is very significant (p = 0.009 < 0.01) (see Table 2).

Listening to music while performing repetitive tasks would lower the accuracy of performance, and hard music is even worse than light music (see Fig. 1). Plus, hard music would impair would efficiency compared with light music (see Fig. 2). It is noticeable that efficiency seems to be the lowest with no music. The reason may lie in the fact that though having been given time for practice before experiment started, participants weren’t familiar enough with the software provided.

Number of different pixels under three different experimental background conditions

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Time-on-task under three different experimental background conditions

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3.2 Task Performance of Creative Task

Number of words and correlation of words are the indicators for task performance of creative task. Specifically, correlation of words is measured by Chinese word similarity query. It is based on a base containing 8 million Chinese word vectors. The similarity interval of two words is [0,1], where 0 stands for the lowest similarity and 1 the highest. The Average number of words and correlation of words are shown in Table 3.

One-way ANOVA was run where music type was the independent variable and number of words and correlation of words are the dependent variables. Results show that music environment has influence on correlation of words (p = 0.043 < 0.05), however it doesn’t seem to have impact on the number of words (p > 0.05) (see Table 4).

As is shown in Fig. 3, correlation of words decreases under background music, and hard music is more negative than light music. This shows that music may impair work performance while completing creative tasks.

Correlation of words under three different experimental background conditions

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3.3 Physiological Measures

Mean heart rate, heart-rate variability and GSR are the indicators of physiological status. Mean heart rate indicates arousal, and heart-rate variability shows mental effort. GSR demonstrates changes in the degree of anxiety. Table 5 shows the GSR and mean heart rate statistics under three music environments.

We ran a MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) to study how different independent factors interact (see Table 6). Music and task are named the independent variables, while GSR, mean heart rate and heart-rate variability are the dependent variables. Results show that the presence of music has little impact on GSR, mean heart-rate and heart-rate variability (p > 0.05). Type of task does act on mean heart rate (p = 0.02 < 0.05), however the variable doesn’t seem to impact GSR or heart-rate variability. Interaction between music and task exhibits no significance (p > 0.05), which means that GSR, mean hear rate and heart-rate variability aren’t affected by the interaction between music and task.

Results showed that mean heart rate increases for creative task compared with repetitive task (see Fig. 4). This indicates that the level of arousal increases when performing the probably more challenging creative task. However, the type of task doesn’t have much influence on mental effort or anxiety.

Mean heart rate of repetitive task and creative task under three different experimental background conditions

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3.4 Assessment Questionnaire

Our questionnaire used a 5-point Likert scale. Score for each question ranges from 1 to 5, which corresponds to the five levels of assessment–“very motivating” (1 point), “motivating”, “no impact”, “disturbing” and “very disturbing” (5 point). After collecting questionnaires from our participants, statistical analysis followed.

Contrary to actual task performance, participants seem to be positive about light music. For both repetitive task and creative task, nearly half think that light music can stimulate task performance and almost no one think it would act negatively. Results showed that participants are more positive about light music when performing repetitive task compared with creative task (see Table 7). When it comes to hard music, participants became more negative about the influence on task completion, especially for repetitive task (see Table 7). It’s interesting to note that in terms of the frequency of listening to music while completing design tasks, only 4.6% participants choose perform the design tasks without music, which testifies our observation that music is a common companion for design tasks (Fig. 5).

The influence of two kinds of music on the performance of two kinds of tasks

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We can thus make the following conclusions:

1. 1.

   Listening to music can lower task performance for both repetitive task and creative task. For repetitive task, listening to music would lower the accuracy of work, and hard music is a worse choice than light music. Plus, work efficiency decreases in the presence of hard music compared with light music. For creative task, listening to music would harm the ability of thinking out of the box, and hard music is still a worse choice than light music.

2. 2.

   Music doesn’t have much impact on anxiety, arousal or mental effort when performing repetitive task and creative task.

3. 3.

   Arousal increases when performing creative task compared with repetitive task, but there seems little impact on anxiety or mental effort.

Limitations.

In this study we chose image-matting and brainstorming as representations for repetitive design task and creative design task. However, it is hard to deny that design tasks are rather complicated and are various in process and perception even within the same type. This poses challenges to the application of our study, namely our result may not be applicable for other repetitive or creative design tasks. Also, sometimes designers need to perform tasks which both involve monotonous work and creative work such as Photoshop and video editing. There are also some other types of tasks such as logical task (e.g. modeling). Plus, participants were design students aged from 20 to 25, who have studied design for 3 to 5 years. Our target participants fall in a quite narrow range, and the impact of music on design tasks might be different for newcomers to design or experienced design professionals. Last but not least, physiological statistics almost demonstrate no significance in our study. The reason may lie in the fact that as an activity where people sit still and remain rather calm, as opposed to activities such as driving or running, the change in those statistics are fairly minor. However, this doesn’t mean that music doesn’t change psychological status.

Future Work.

It is interesting to do research on other repetitive design tasks and creative design tasks, as well as other type of design tasks to figure out whether the impact on music echoes with our result. Also, including participants with different levels of design skills and from different areas of design is an option. It is also advisable to examine at length the impact of music on design tasks using testing methods such as EEG monitoring.

In this study we explored the impact of music (no music, light music and hard music) on repetitive design task and creative design task. Contrary to the common knowledge, our findings reveal that listening to music impairs work performance of both repetitive task and creative task. For repetitive task accuracy and efficiency are lowered, and creativity is reduced for creative task. Plus, hard music is an even worse choice than light music. In terms of physiological measures, listening to music while performing tasks doesn’t seem to impact anxiety, arousal or mental effort. However, people do have a higher level of arousal when doing the creative task, which is probably more challenging. Assessment questionnaire indicate that participants were generally positive about the impact of light music on task completion, especially for repetitive task. This shows between a gap between how people feel and the actual result.

Further work could lie in exploring the impact of music on different repetitive/creative tasks, as well as other types of design tasks such as logical tasks. Also, including participants with different levels of design skills and from different areas of design is an option. Plus, it is advisable to employ testing methods such as EEG monitoring to dig deep into the physiological impact on music on design tasks.