Visual aesthetics and the user experience

Abstract

User experience is conceptualized as a phenomenon consisting of instrumental and non-instrumental quality
perceptions as well as emotional user reactions. Visual aesthetics is defined as one non-instrumental quality and
available methods are applied to measure the perception of visual aesthetics of interactive systems. Selected
results of two studies are reported that addressed the influence of perceived usability and visual aesthetics on
emotional user reactions and consequences of user experience and studied the effect of user characteristics and
contextual parameters on these relations. The results show that usability and visual aesthetics can be perceived
independently. Furthermore, the relevance of perceived visual aesthetics for emotional user reactions and
consequences of user experience is demonstrated. However, the results reveal that the importance depends on
user characteristics, e.g. the centrality of visual product aesthetics, and context parameters, e.g. the goaldirectedness
of the interaction.