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.