Summary - What is beautiful is usable

Here are my notes the paper 'What is beautiful is usable'¹, which was a foundational evaluation study about interface aesthetics and usability.

Introduction

• Prior to first quarter of 20th century industrial design had little consideration for aesthetics in production of mass goods
• Industrial design pioneers Loewy and Dreyfuss introduced aesthetics into mass production and developed industrial design into marketing instrument
• Norman (e.g. with 'The Psychology of Everyday Things') comes 1/2 century later to bemoan designs that place aesthetics over usability
• HCI seems to stress usability over aesthetics. Possible reasons:
  • focus on form over function through recent decades
  • computer industry's efficient nature
• Usability (cognitive) and aesthetics (affective) are measured differently
  • aesthetics: non-quantifiable, subjective and affect-based experience of system use
  • usability: measured by relatively objective means with efficiency as main criterion
• Neglecting aesthetics is a problem because:
  • gulf between industry practice and attention given to research in HCI
  • ignores need of users who likely value aesthetics and fashionable designs
  • users do not consider the two dimensions as independent: research suggests a strong correlation between aesthetic perceptions of an interface and perception of ease of use
    • See Jordan, P.W., 1998. Human factors for pleasure in product use. Applied Ergonomics 29 (1), 25±33

Background

• Usability engineering emerged as a sub-discipline in the early 1980s - emphasis has been on objective perf criteria:
  • time to learn
  • error rate
  • time to complete a task
• More subjective criteria, e.g. user satisfaction have also been recognised as good HCI design measures
• Usability criterion > aesthetics claim is pervasive in HCI
• When aesthetics and usability contradict, usability is prioritised
• Due to neglect, little research has been done to investigate relationship between users' perceptions of aesthetic and usability
• The mechanism that links affective and cognitive evaluations of user interfaces is not clear. Strong correlation between perceived usability and aesthetics may resemble the relationship between physical attractiveness and socially desirable characteristics in social psychology.
• Users seem to interact with computers in a natural way. Research has found that users interact with computers in a natural and social, real-life manner.
• Social psychology research shown that "what is beautiful is good" to humans. People who are physically attractive are assumed to posses more socially desirable personality traits.
  • beauty is associated with other attributes and thus carries over from physical appearance
  • halo effect
• Positive relationship between interface aesthetics and perceived usability may be induced by:
  • a popular stereotyping which might associate successful design on one (noticeable) design dimension with successful design of other, less implicit design dimensions.
  • a halo effect may cause carry over of an aesthetic (or not aesthetic) design to perceptions of other design features.
  • an affective response to the design's aesthetics may improve users' mood and their overall evaluations of the system.

Research questions

1. Does user generally associate aesthetics with other system attributes? Is user judgement masked by interface aesthetics?
2. Does using the system change user perception of aesthetics? Previous research has shown that perceptions of aesthetics and usability are linked prior to system use. Do initial perceptions hold in the face of evidence to the contrary?

Method

• 132 industrial engineering students took part in the study for class credit
• average age was 25, 67% males
• 9 different ATM designs were selected and presented to students through a computer program. Each layout was presented three times.
• ATM layouts rated on
  • (i) aesthetics
  • (ii) ease of use; and
  • (iii) amount of information on the screen.

Discussion & conclusion

• Results corroborated results of earlier studies - strong correlation between perception of interface aesthetics and perception of usability of entire system
• Users able to distinguish between system properties, e.g. amount of info on interface associated with beauty or ease of use
• Study "reinforces the claim that the aesthetics-usability association is a genuine phenomenon and not the result of an evaluation method bias"
• "Post-experimental perceptions of system usability were affected by the interface's aesthetics and not by the actual usability of the system"
• More aesthetic interfaces were ranked higher for aesthetics and usability
• Users using less aesthetic ATMs would rate their usability and aesthetics more favourably post usage relative to initial evaluations - may be explained by "mere exposure" effect / "love the one you're with"
• To sum, interface aesthetics affect a priori perceptions and post facto evaluations of ease of use
• Results call for an "integrative approach to interface design" giving weight to both aesthetics and usability
• Results may be relevant in both voluntarily and involuntarily used systems
• Aesthetic interfaces may also improve actual system performance
• Results are in line with prior psychology research - 'what is beautiful is good'
• More research needed on the subject

Resources

1. N Tractinsky, A.S Katz, D Ikar, What is beautiful is usable, Interacting with Computers, Volume 13, Issue 2, December 2000, Pages 127–145, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0953-5438(00)00031-X