6533b872fe1ef96bd12d3c34

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Aesthetic Appeal and Visual Usability in Four Icon Design Eras

subject

description

Technological artefacts express time periods in their visual design. Due time, visual culture changes and thus affects the design of pictorial representations in technological products, such as icons in user interfaces. Previous research of temporal aspects in human-computer interaction has been focusing on particular interaction situations, but not on the effects of design eras on user experience. The influence of icon design styles of different eras on aesthetic and usability experiences was studied with the method of primed product comparisons. Affective preferences and their processing times were analysed in order to examine visual usability in terms of semantic distance and aesthetic appeal of icons from different design eras. Aesthetic and usability preferences of icons from different eras varied, which allowed the investigation of the process in which users experience icons. This examination results in elaborating the process, for example the relationship between cognitive processing fluency, familiarity, and beauty. peerReviewed