Investigating objective measures of web page aesthetics and usability

Helen C. Purchase, John Hamer, Adrian Jamieson, Oran Ryan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference PaperResearchpeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

As part of the ongoing debate about the role of aesthetic design of interfaces, this paper presents an aesthetic evaluation tool which quantifies the layout characteristics of a web page according to fourteen different metrics. By using the rich medium of web pages as our input, we have significantly extended the prior work done in this area which has typically focussed on simple interfaces. We report the results of an experiment to determine whether users judgements of "aesthetic appeal and "perceived usability match the numeric metric results. We found that aesthetic appeal (but not perceived usability) was captured by a metric that considered the placement of all objects on the screen, and that the placement of images is a strong predictor of both aesthetic appeal and perceived usability. We suggest practical implications of this work for web page designers.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationUser Interfaces 2011 - Proceedings of the Twelfth Australasian User Interface Conference, AUIC 2011
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Pages19-28
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9781920682972
Publication statusPublished - 2011
Externally publishedYes
EventAustralasian User Interface Conference 2011 - Perth, Australia
Duration: 17 Jan 201120 Jan 2011
Conference number: 12th
https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.5555/2460616 (Proceedings)

Publication series

NameConferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology Series
Volume117
ISSN (Print)1445-1336

Conference

ConferenceAustralasian User Interface Conference 2011
Abbreviated titleAUIC 2011
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityPerth
Period17/01/1120/01/11
Internet address

Keywords

  • Aesthetics
  • Empirical study
  • Layout
  • Perception

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