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What is AESTHETIC USABILITY EFFECT? What does AESTHETIC USABILITY EFFECT mean? AESTHETIC USABILITY EFFECT meaning – AESTHETIC USABILITY EFFECT definition – AESTHETIC USABILITY EFFECT explanation.
Source: Wikipedia.org article, adapted under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ license.
The Aesthetic-Usability Effect describes a paradox that people perceive more aesthetic designs as much more intuitive, than those considered to be less aesthetically pleasing. The effect has been observed in several experiments and has significant implications regarding the acceptance, use, and performance of a design. Usability and aesthetics are the two most important factors in assessing the overall user experience for an application. Usability and aesthetics are judged by a user’s reuse expectations, and then their post-use, or experienced, final judgement. A user’s cognitive style can influence how they interact with and perceive an application, which in turn can influence their judgement of said application.
Masaaki Kurosu and Kaori Kashimura, researchers at Hitachi in Tokyo, demonstrated the aesthetic-usability effect in their study. The results of the analysis show that “the apparent usability is less correlated with the inherent usability compared to the apparent beauty. … This suggests that the user may be strongly affected by the aesthetic aspect of the interface even when they try to evaluate the interface in its functional aspects, and it is suggested that the interface designers should strive not only to improve the inherent usability but also brush up the apparent usability or the aesthetic aspect of the interface.” In other words, aesthetic usability effect play an important role in user experience.
The aesthetics factor was manipulated by differing in terms of color combination, visual layout, and text font, which determine the level of aesthetics. According to the study by Hall and Hanna, users perceived websites with white–black and black–white color combinations as less pleasing and stimulating than ones with non-grayscale color combinations. A few previous studies Kurosu & Kashimura (1995) Tractinsky (1997) Tractinsky ( 2000) demonstrated a significant effect of visual layout on perceived aesthetics in experiments with Automated Teller Machine (ATM) layouts with different arrangements of content items. In an experiment using home robotic control systems, Conklin (2006) showed that the manipulation of interface aesthetics with the use of color, layout, and font style was successful. Moreover, McCracken and Wolfe (2004) recommended using of Georgia or Verdana font styles not intermixed in the body text of a website rather than Times New Roman or Arial intermixed in the body text.
Cognitive style is a characteristic of the user determined by the Cognitive Styles Analysis (CSA).The interface and functional features of an application can be harmonized or non-harmonized in accordance with a user’s cognitive style. Cognitive styles could be classified into two groups of people-imager and verbalizer, or the Wholist-Analytic and the Verbal-Imagery dimension. So an application success might vary, depending on how it caters to individual cognitive style. Imagers are more influenced by aesthetics factor and tends to utilize the aesthetics features in understanding and using an application. In 2011, Sangwon Lee and Richard J. Koubeks showed results that the effect of aesthetics factor on pre-use preference was significantly different based on cognitive styles. There were significant differences in the pre-use preference of the changing aesthetics but not between the two types of cognitive styles of the test subjects. The same applied to the pre-use usability factor of the application as well. There was little difference in the effect of aesthetics on Wholist-Analytic versus Verbal-Imagery. This may be surprising considering that imagers think in pictures (visually), versus verbalizers who think in words. The effect of usability on the time performance was not significantly different between the two groups…..
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