Paper: Aesthetics, Visual Appeal, Usability and User Satisfaction: What Do the User's Eyes Tell the User's Brain?

Aesthetics, Visual Appeal, Usability and User Satisfaction:
What Do the User’s Eyes Tell the User’s Brain?
Gitte Lindgaard
Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society
Vol. 5, No. 1, 2007, pp: 1-14

Summary: looks are more important than usability, but why?

Exploring the reasons why "people may be more satisfied with a beautiful product that performs suboptimally than with a more usable by less appealing product."

Shuttle site issues

So I'm traveling soon and I needed to book a shuttle from the airport to my hotel and was struck by something incredibly silly. After inputting my options and going to the form where I enter my payment info, at the bottom of the page was this:



So far so good, but the kicker was that when I clicked on the link to read the Terms and Conditions, the checkbox was automatically checked and this is what I saw:



How exactly am I supposed to read that? It just made all their users into liars.

CIS Ph.D. program

Met w/ the chair of the UH CIS Ph.D. program and it sounds promising.

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There are 3 required courses that need to be passed with a B or better:

CIS 701: Communication/Information Theories of Society: A critical review of major theoretical and empirical traditions in communication and information sciences. Focus on European, American, Third World, and applied research.

CIS 702: Communication/Information Technologies: Technological concepts underlying data communications; information processing and computers; communication channels and networks, information storage and retrieval, and computer hardware and software.

CIS 703: Communication/Information Research Methods: Current research methodologies in decision sciences, computer science, library science, and communication. Emphasis on methodologies suitable for interdisciplinary analysis.

There is also a requirement to take CIS720, Interdisciplinary Seminar every semester while enrolled.

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You are required to take 3 exams that you choose from a list of 7. 1 exam will be declared your "Primary" while the other 2 will be your "Secondary" exams. Each exam typically runs about 3 hours (6 for primary) and generally consists of a list of questions from which you choose three.

Exams I will likely take:

• Human Computer Interaction(discourse)At least two courses from:
  
  
  
  • ICS 464 Intro. to HCI Design: Application of concepts and methodologies of human factors, psychology and software engineering to address ergonomic, cognitive, and social factors in the design and evaluation of human-computer systems.
  
  
  • ICS 469 Intro. to Cognitive Science: Introduces basic concepts, central problems, and methods from cognitive science. Identifies contributions from disciplines such as cognitive psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and neuroscience.
  
  
  • ICS 664 Human Computer Interaction: Studies of human performance in designing and using information systems. Emphasizes concepts and methodologies from human factors, psychology, and software engineering relating to human performance
  
  
  • ICS 665 User Interfaces and Hypermedia: Advanced concepts in construction of interfaces between computers and their users. Hypermedia information structures, guidelines, problems, and tradeoffs. Discussion of selected readings, implementation of prototypes.
  
  
  • ICS 667 Advanced HCI Design Methods: Advanced analytical and empirical methods for the design and evaluation of usable, useful, and robust human-computer interfaces. Students will apply selected methodologies to a major system design project.
  
  
  • ICS 668 Social Informatics (also used for the Social Informatics area): An advanced introduction to the design of human-computer systems and other technological artifacts for supporting human collaboration in learning, work and social contexts, and to theoretical perspectives and empirical studies of collaboration that inform such design.
  
  
  • LIS 677 Human Dimension in Information Systems: Lecture/discussion on human element in information systems, including physical, cognitive and affective behavior in interaction with information systems. Information retrieval, human-computer interaction and cognitive science research, quantitative and qualitative research methods. Research component.
  
  
  • certain 491/691 courses, ask if they will count
  
  
  
  



• Communication and Information Theories
  Requirement: CIS 701
  Talk to the Chair of the exam committee to form a reading list.
  
  
• Social Informatics
  Taken as a secondary, this requires one of the following courses:
  
  
  
  • ICS 668: Social Informatics (one of the options for the HCI requirements)
  
  
  • ICS 691: Social Computing
  
  
  • COM 634: Social Media
  
  
  
  Talk to the Chair of the exam committee regarding a reading list, the site has nothing listed.
  

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Deadlines:

• first year: you must attempt at least one area exam, take 720, take any courses required for the exams, and take whichever of 701, 702, or 703 that is offered


• second year: you must pass at least two area exams and submit a research paper for publication or review, take 720, take any courses required for the exams, and take whichever of 701, 702, or 703 that is offered


• third year: all area examination and research paper requirements should be completed, take 720, and take whichever of 701, 702, or 703 that is offered


• fourth year: you must have completed 701, 702, and 703, and complete the proposal defense


• seventh year: you must finish the dissertation

Plan of attack:

1. Sit in on any of the classes required for the exams whenever they are offered. Verify that sitting in will count and that I don't need to take it in an official capacity. Focus on getting the minimum set to take each targeted exam: 2 for HCI, 1 for SI (if I take ICS668 it covers both HCI and SI), CIT only requires 701 which is part of the CIS set of required courses. In theory, ICS 668 and one other will do the trick.


2. Talk to the exam Chairs to work out reading lists and set up a schedule to work through them.


3. Once the classes are completed and the reading list has been dented, officially apply for the program (target: Feb. 2013 enrollment deadline) and follow their timeline


4. Keep sitting in on courses relevant to interests.


5. Look for interesting papers at relevant conferences and start following the authors on twitter to get exposed to what the current topics of research are.

First attempt at a page redesign

Before:


The problem here is too much text! The eye doesn't know where to look. On this page, these are the primary actions the user would want to accomplish:
- log in
- view published results (does not require a log in)
- find out if they can use the system, and if so, how to get started
- get information regarding deadlines

The first two actions are small links with no real method of attracting the user's eye. They're lost in the sea of text. The third action is right at the top, but the header for it is not obvious and is easily missed to a roving eye. The last action is buried at the bottom of the page and easily missed by users with smaller screens.

After:


The first two actions are immediately obvious. These are the first places the eye goes. The third action could still use improvement. The "who can use it" part is presented right at the top, but it doesn't really attract the eye. A header is needed. Also, the part about getting started got moved to the bottom of the page where it might be missed by those with smaller screens. Still, it's clearly labeled and has much less text. The last action has been moved up to where it will appear on smaller screens and has explanations added to the different time-frames to help the user get a clearer idea of how the system works and what their responsibilities are.

I think there is still room for improvement, particularly with the third action, but it's much cleaner and hopefully answers all four issues better than before.

Wizards vs. Forms

From: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/09/wizards-versus-forms.php

When to use a wizard:
- When actions need to happen in a specific order.
- When there are many tasks to be done and it would be less stressful to the user to break it up into manageable parts.
- When the actions performed differ depending on what data has already been given.

When to use a form:
- When the user should know all the data they need to provide to get a task done (like when you see a form, think it's simple enough to proceed, and then the next form asks for far more. If you knew that amount of time or data was going to be required, you never would have started at that point in time.)
- When you likely have "power users." If someone is going to be using your form repeatedly, it's better to allow them to tab through the form quickly than use a wizard and have to wait for each new step to load.
- When speed/performance is an issue. One form is one hit on the server while a wizard can be many hits and many times back and forth across the network. People with slow networks will appreciate the form over the wizard.

The general guideline (not a rigid rule): "novices and infrequent users like wizards, but frequent and power users prefer forms."

While wizards can be useful, don't forget to consider the option of allowing the user to select from multiple forms.

When deciding between forms and wizards for a user's experience, don't forget to consider coding difficulty, maintainability, and efficiency.

Paper: Visual Appeal vs. Usability: Which One Influences User Perceptions of a Website More?

Visual Appeal vs. Usability: Which One Influences User Perceptions of a Website More?
Christine Phillips and Barbara Chapparo
Usability News
Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University
Vol. 11, Issue 2, October 2009

Paper: Aesthetics, Visual Appeal, Usability and User Satisfaction: What Do the User's Eyes Tell the User's Brain?

Aesthetics, Visual Appeal, Usability and User Satisfaction:
What Do the User’s Eyes Tell the User’s Brain?
Gitte Lindgaard
Australian Journal of Emerging Technologies and Society
Vol. 5, No. 1, 2007, pp: 1-14

Summary: looks are more important than usability, but why?

Exploring the reasons why "people may be more satisfied with a beautiful product that performs suboptimally than with a more usable by less appealing product."

This paper really is almost a literature review unto itself. Mostly a grouping together of different studies into a cohesive narrative. No actual new research is discussed in this paper.

Compares seeing a website for the first time to meeting a person for the first time. Right from the start you have an instinctual like or dislike that has nothing to do with reason.

"Exposure effect" People prefer things that they've seen before, even if they don't recall seeing them - illustrated by Zajonc (1980). In web terms could mean people like things that they already know and understand, standards.

"Confirmation bias" Once a person has made up their mind, they tend to search for things that confirm that bias while rejecting things that disprove it. (Mynatt, Doherty, & Tweeney, 1977)

Lindgaard, 1999 illustrated the importance of color in determining "visual appeal, perceived usability, and user satisfaction in web sites. Color was cited as the main reason for disliking a web site and content was the reason stated for favoring a web site." White and blue were the most favored while yellow and black were the least. Pastels were also deemed favorable while most dark shadings were least.

Reading time: 25 minutes

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I re-read this post on 6/8/2012 and the part about the most favored/least favored colors really caught me.  Just this morning I had a choice of two gas stations.  Whenever they have the same price on gas, I always favor one over the other and I was pondering why.  At first I though "it looks friendlier" but that's very vague.  Going further I thought about the colors and the one I favored was blue and white while the other, which I had deemed "ugly", was yellow and black.  Just a surprise to see those exact colors listed in the exact favorable/unfavorable scenario in a totally different context.