Aesthetic appeal versus usability: Implications for user satisfaction

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Aesthetic appeal versus usabilityImplications
for user satisfaction

• Gitte Lindgaard Cathy Dudek
• Carleton HOTLab
• Ottawa, Canada

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Satisfaction

• is the poor cousin of usability
• Satisfaction defined as attitudinal
• Avoid negative feelings
• Measured in rating scales
• Outcomes, summaries
• We are interested in the experiential
• Process
• Construct

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• One site tested was very high in appeal and very
  low in usability
• Appeal reliable wow effect
• Usability
• Heuristic evaluation found 157 unique problems
• 121 of these were severe
• A subset of these were exposed in the 8 usability
  tasks

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Research question

• Does the first impression persist after
  completing usability tasks?
• Or do users change their mind after encountering
  serious usability problems?

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Measures

• Satisfaction proportion of positive statements
  in
• Perceived usability
• Perceived aesthetics
• emotion
• likeability
• expectation
• (Lindgaard Dudek, 2001)

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Issues raised here

• Task demands
• Do users who anticipate a usability test pay more
  attention to usability problems when first
  browsing a site than users who do not expect a
  test?
• If so, perceived usability scores will be lower
  for the former than for the latter

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Experimental design
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Findings

• Subjects completed, on average, 3.8 of 8 tasks
  successfully
• no subject completed all the tasks
• no task was completed by all subjects
• So, it is safe to conclude that usability
  levels were very low

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Findings perceived usability
33
31
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Site was not perceived as usable by either
group Site was seen to be less usable after than
before the test
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Findings perceived aesthetics
91
87
91
Site was perceived as beautiful by both
groups Site remained beautiful after the
usability test
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Findings emotion
87
66
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The ratio of positivenegative emotion statements
was lower for the test group both before and
after the test.
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Findings likeability
79
49
25
The ratio of positivenegative likeability
statements was Lower for the test group both
before and after the test
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Findoings expectation
64
11
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The ratio of positivenegative expectation
statements was Very much lower for the test group
before and after The test
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Findings satisfaction
66
51
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Satisfaction appears to be determined by several
factors
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First Impressions

• The first impression apparently rests on
  aesthetics
• The perception of beauty persists, but
• Perceived usability, likeability and expectation
  change after facing serious usability problems

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First impression

• Formed in an instant (3-5 msec)
• Based on changes in arousal levels
  
• 
  
  (Berlyne, 1971 1972)
• Evoked via the amygdala, not via the hypothalamus
  (Damasio, 2000 LeDoux, 19941996 Goleman, 1996)
• Can be overridden by pre-exposure decision
  (Epstein, 1997)
  
  
• Is difficult to change confirmation bias
  
• 
  
  (Doherty, Mynatt Tweney, 1977)

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One question is

• Does emotion precede cognition
• 
  
  (Zajonc, 1980 Bornstein, 1992)
• or is it the other way around? (Epstein, 1997)
• I.e. are first impressions
• what my body tells me to feel,
  or are they
  
• what my brain tells me to think?

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Issues raised here

• Confirmation bias
• If the first impression drives satisfaction, it
  should not change after usability test
• If usability drives satisfaction, it should
  change after usability test
• and it should vary between high- and
  low-usability sites

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Experimental design

• Group 1 (n 40)
• Browse ? interview/ratings
• Group 2 (n 40)
• Browse ? interview/ratings ? usability test ?
  interview/ratings
• 2 e-commerce sites tested
• Scores
• (a) proportion of positive statements
• (b) WAMMI (Kirakowski et al. 1998)

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Results Satisfaction
Mean satisfaction scores before after test
Main effect, before/after (p lt .001) main effect
for web site (p ,lt .05)
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Perceived usability
Mean perceived usability before/after test
Main effect before/after (p lt .001) main effect
for web site (p lt .001)
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Aesthetics
Mean aesthetics score before/after test
No significant effects
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Satisfaction, before test only
Mean satisfaction scores, first interview
Main effect for web site (p lt .05) main effect
for subject-group (p lt .05)
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Perceived usability before test
Mean perceived usability scores before test only
Main effect for web site (p lt .001)
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Conclusion

• Confirmation bias
• Aesthetics scores taken on their own did not
  differ before the test
• ..and they did not change after test
• Confirmation bias on the aesthetics dimension
  
• But
• Satisfaction scores decreased after the test
• Perceived usability scores decreased
• No confirmation bias on overall satisfaction or
  on usability

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Conclusion

• Task demands
• Lower satisfaction scores for subjects expecting
  a usability test than for browsing-only subjects
  suggest that task demands do affect attention to
  usability
• Subjects are sensitive to actual usability levels
• As evidenced both in satisfaction scores and in
  perceived usability scores

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Conclusion

• So, satisfaction appears to be driven partly by
  actual usability
• Aesthetics judgments appear to be independent of
  perceived usability

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Next steps

• Currently developing satisfaction scales that
  enable developers to pinpoint where to improve
  their sites to increase user satisfaction

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So, now to aesthetics

• Gary Fernandes MA thesis
• 125 sites collected, all of unknown companies
• Preliminary study, n 22
• Selected 25 best and 25 worst sites
• N 30
• Viewed sites for 500 msec, then rated visual
  appeal in two rounds

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Measurement scale
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Appeal ratings, study 1
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Appeal ratings, study 2
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Visual appeal ratings, study 1 vs study 2
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Conclusion

• Aesthetics judgments are made very quickly
• They are highly robust
• New results show that they persist even when
  subjects are able to inspect the home page for an
  unlimited period of time

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Next steps

• Expose stimuli for 40 msec
• Collect genres of sites
• Evolve tool enabling companies to test their own
  web site against others

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