An exploration of relations between visual appeal, trustworthiness and perceived usability of homepages

Abstract

Extremely high correlations between repeated judgments of visual appeal of homepages shown for 50 milliseconds have been interpreted as evidence for a mere exposure effect [Lindgaard et al. 2006]. Continuing that work, the present research had two objectives. First, it investigated the relationship between judgments differing in cognitive demands. Second, it began to identify specific visual attributes that appear to contribute to different judgments. Three experiments are reported. All used the stimuli and viewing time as before. Using a paradigm known to disrupt processing beyond the stimulus offset, Experiment 1 was designed to ensure that the previous findings could not be attributed to such continued processing. Adopting a within-subject design, Experiment 2 investigated the extent to which judgments differing in cognitive demands (visual appeal, perceived usability, trustworthiness) may be driven by the visual characteristics of a Web page. It also enabled analyses of visual attributes that contributed most to the different judgments. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 but using a between-subject design to ensure that no practice effect could occur. The results suggest that all three types of judgments are largely driven by visual appeal, but that cognitively demanding judgments are processed in a qualitatively different manner than visual appeal, and that they rely on somewhat different visual attributes. A model accounting for the results is provided.

Analyzing the Role of Interactivity in User Experience

“…The strong task (before/after use) effect in both experiments was also present in Teo et al's (2003) findings. Before and after interaction differences in aesthetics and usability perceptions have been reported by Diefenbach & Hassenzahl (2009), while Lee & Koubek (2010) and Lindgaard et al (2011) found that aesthetics is less influential after interaction, where usability tends to dominate.…”

“…These items were drawn from several sources on arousal, hedonics and emotion (Berlyne 1960;Lavie & Tractinsky 2004;Lindgaard, Dudek et al 2011;O'Brien 2010).…”

What makes icons appealing? The role of processing fluency in predicting icon appeal in different task contexts

“…Despite a great deal of research examining interface -particularly website -appeal (e.g., Cyr et al, 2010;Golander et al, 2012;Lindgaard et al, 2011;Moshagen & Theilsch, 2010;Schmidt et al, 2009), very little research has examined the appeal of icons which are an integral part of almost every interface.…”

“…In particular, we were interested in the possibility that the use of this heuristic might extend beyond the initial instantaneous appeal responses observed for websites and in ERP responses to logos and icons (Handy et al, 2008;Lindgaard et al, 2006Lindgaard et al, , 2011Thielsch & Hirschfield, 2010) Experiment 1 established that familiarity and visual complexity, both known to predict efficient performance with icons, are important predictors of icon appeal. The concreteness, or pictorialness, of icons appears to have a secondary role in predicting both performance and appeal.…”

“…It is now well established that users can make very rapid -almost instantaneous -evaluations of the appeal of interfaces (Handy et al, 2008;Lindgaard et al, 2006;Lindgaard et al, 2011). Lindgaard et al (2006) interpreted participants' ability to make these rapid judgements as being the result of the 'mere exposure effect'.…”