This sequencing is very essential otherwise the event will become messy. Review the timeline once or twice to see that everything is in order and any missed items or changes can be incorporated accordingly. Decide on how to represent the timeline. It should be easily understandable and pleasant to watch. By using our research timeline template, you can plan your schedule of doing things in an orderly way.
Apart from having ready-made content, the template also contains original suggestive contents and professional graphic design. Project Timeline Template The project timeline is an important chart that lets you track the deadline as well as the status of the project.
If in case you are too busy to create a timeline from scratch, count on the free download project timeline template that is available online — you will get a readymade blueprint for a project timeline that can be modified using your data.
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If you need help with drafting these timelines, the sample history timeline template online would be helpful with their pre-structured, customizable blueprints. These are great time savers. Well, nothing to worry about as the online world offers a free download timeline chart template today where you will get readymade charts that could be easily modified with your timeline data.
To ease your work here, you have the PowerPoint timeline template sample over the internet that offers a pre-structured timeline presentation- which you would simply have to download and customize. A typical example is arranging in sequential order of all the events in a school that takes place for an academic year.
Number timelines, where the labels are represented in numbers. Interactive timelines, where the labels are editable. To illustrate, the business prospects of a business are studied by interactively changing the label data and the projections can be visualized.
This will help the entrepreneurs to take appropriate decisions. Timelines for indicating milestones of a project. Milestones are crucial for a project and creating a timeline for them is equally important. The office timeline sample templates which are generally available for download are used for this purpose.
Word Timeline Template Timelines are important for both school students and professionals working on projects. If you in search of ideas relating to the format of timelines, you might as well opt for the Word timeline template example over the web that arrives with a readymade and easily customizable timeline structure.
You will get these templates free of cost. Download Word Format Timeline Template Free Download Event Timeline Template If you are an event planner, you need to maintain an event timeline to keep a proper track of all your event projects. To ease your burden, the online world offers a free download event timeline template that comes up with a readymade customizable event timeline blueprint which saves you from creating[ everything from scratch.
Timeline templates for professionals that look similar to the Gantt chart where Project timeline milestones can also be created are available for download.
The HTML timeline template can be used to produce better design and attractive presentations. The horizontal timeline template allows you to create a horizontal, page-width timeline. There are free online tools available timeline generator so you can make use of them. Proceed to click on the [Text] in the Text pane, and then type your content for each text. One of the most convenient technique to create a timeline in Excel is to make use of a customizable timeline template.
An MS Excel template that is downloadable is of great value for those who are inexperienced in making a project timeline.
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The virtual world offers a sample of an excel timeline template where you will have a readymade Excel timeline structure that you can customize easily with your specific project timeline data. Well, to save your burden here, you can go for the free download keynote timeline template available online which offers a readymade and easily modifiable framework for your keynote timeline. If you are too packed-up to create the construction timeline from scratch, you can go for the construction timeline template sample online where you will get an easily customizable pre-structured construction timeline.
These templates are available free of cost. Construction Timeline Template Excel Format Free Download Marketing Timeline Template The marketing timeline is crucial for every marketing plan that helps to track the status and deadline of the plan. These templates are readymade timeline structures which can be customized conveniently with your marketing timeline details.
Sample Marketing Timeline Template Free Free Download Blank History Timeline Templates for Kids Free Download Uses of Timeline Timelines are frequently used in education to assist students and researchers to understand the order or chronology of historical proceedings and trends for a subject.
Timelines are also useful for biographies like a timeline of world war. This template has a ready to use timeline using a SmartArt arrow shape to express an ongoing event or process.
The arrows SmartArt shape consists of dots along it to identify specific events through time. Vitruvius 1st century BC is probably the first person to lay forth systematic and elaborated principles of design. It is not surprising that architecture was the subject of his elaborated writings, being the most salient and complex design discipline, which has affected human life ubiquitously.
In addition to the fact that information technology and interactive systems have now become just as ubiquitous, it is not difficult to see that there is much in common for architecture and information technology e. In architecture, the Vitruvian principles have been influential since their rediscovery in the 15th century Johnson, ; Kruft, It is straightforward for the various computing and IT disciplines to recognize firmitas as the core principle of their research and practice.
The need for robust, reliable and dependable software, hardware, systems and products has occupied the field since its inception. We might say that, just as firmitas serves as a prerequisite for designing structure, so do we consider it a precondition for any IT system or product. Whereas there is little disagreement about the importance of firmitas principle, the computing community was originally much less enthused about the utilitas principle. In the context of IT, this principle deals with designing to meet individual and organizational needs and goals, with emphasis on the efficiency and the effectiveness of the interaction between people and artifacts.
In fact, the HCI community can take much of the credit for incorporating the utilitas principle into mainstream practices in the computing industry cf. Tractinsky, The field of HCI has its roots in attempts to study and design systems and product that will allow people to use them efficiently Card et al, The notion of usability , for example, which has served as a centerpiece of the HCI community has permeated not only other parts of the IT industry, but have gained almost universal recognition and support for the values of human-centered design.
With firmitas and utilitas in place, the computing community in general, and the area of HCI in particular, are still missing a key Vitruvian principle.
For years, beauty and delight were considered by the HCI community as gratuity, often to be avoided. The emergence of beautiful interactive products during the first decade of the 21st century , which led to commercial success and to academic research e. Copyright terms and licence: pd Public Domain information that is common property and contains no original authorship.
Figure By empirically measuring and calculating the proportions of the human body, Vitruvius may also be considered the first student of ergonomics. HCI and usability experts used to warn against putting too much emphasis on aesthetics e. Their warnings seem to reflect a concern about the ability of these two design aspects to coexist. Beauty was a hurdle on the road to good design. If designers emphasize aesthetics they by default sacrifice usability.
This viewpoint has been changing gradually, thanks in part to a stream of research findings that suggest that at least in terms of perceived design attributes, aesthetics and usability can be viewed as positively correlated Tractinsky et al. Moreover, a closer look at usability guidelines suggests that there is no inherent conflict between usability and aesthetic principles.
Guidelines for usable computer applications rely heavily on Gestalt laws of perception in recommending, for example, orderly displays, keeping elements aligned, grouping elements that belong together, clearly separating them from other elements, etc. Of course, these principles were applied as well to explain and promote the theory and practice of art and design, suggesting that they affect aesthetic impressions Arnheim, One of my favorite demonstrations of this point is the following screens which appeared in a study by Parush et al Participants in that study were asked to evaluate an interface quality of two screens Figure 3.
The participants rated the quality of the left screen as better than the quality of the right screen. But which design quality were they referring to? Visual aesthetics? Copyright terms and licence: All Rights Reserved. Reproduced with permission. See section "Exceptions" in the copyright terms below. The left screen represents good design. The right screen represents bad design.
This example illustrates the findings of another study Lavie and Tractinsky, in which web pages were characterized along two perceived dimensions. This subdimension was highly correlated with usability. Not surprisingly, perceived website usability was highly correlated with classical aesthetics but only moderately with expressive aesthetics.
Thus, it is important to realize that a people can distinguish among different aesthetic aspects of interactive systems, and that b at least some aspects enhance, rather than negate, usability.
In the early days of the HCI discipline, researchers and practitioners emphasized task-related criteria, such as ease of use and efficiency as the ultimate goals of interactive design.
Aesthetics was considered gratuitous at best or even harmful e. However, as interactive technology became so ingrained in everyday life, touching on almost all aspects of it, it became apparent that this position should be reevaluated Norman, , Hassenzahl, This sentiment was enthusiastically embraced in the field of HCI in the context of studying the user experience Hassenzahl and Tractinsky, ; Law and Schaik, This section provides three arguments, from a psychological perspective, for the importance of aesthetic design.
The basic idea is that aesthetic design positively influences both emotional and cognitive processes Norman, ; Leder et al. In this chapter we first discuss the emotional and motivational aspects: aesthetics pleases us and improve our well-being. We then discuss cognitive processes by which visual stimuli are easily recognized and thus are essential to subsequent evaluation of products and environments.
Early HCI writings appear to belittle the need for aesthetic design. Such a perspective may have been motivated mainly by the need to promote the more pressing values of usable design.
Still, given our knowledge about human nature, this position was not sustainable in the long run. It is argued that the value of visual aesthetics stems from its contribution to pleasure and well-being e. Used without permission under the Fair Use Doctrine as permission could not be obtained. Visual aesthetics may temporarily take a side seat to other design aspects when other needs are more pressing; some people may be less sensitive or less in a need for aesthetic environments Bloch et al.
Still the universality of visual arts across cultures and the pleasures induced by it are cited by evolutionary psychologists as evidence for the fundamental role of aesthetics in the psyche of modern Homo sapience Dutton, Aesthetic experiences are associated with affective responses and reflective thought Leder et al. Research using functional magnetic resonance imaging fMRI found further neurophysiologic support for this association in the context of product packaging Reimann et al.
Whereas task-related criteria are often based on extrinsic motivation, aesthetics, through pleasure and engagement, primarily contributes to intrinsic motivation. Thus, there is little reason to believe that the need for aesthetics disappears in front of the computer.
Visually pleasing design enriches our experiences with interactive systems just like they do with any other environment Hassenzahl, Consequently, we expect pleasurable interactions to make us happier and thus to improve our well-being Lyubomirsky et al. Furthermore, they may make us more tolerable of other design imperfections Norman, and improve our task performance under certain conditions Moshagen et al. These forms of idiosyncratic attachments Kleine et al. This trend, though on a smaller scale, can be found in hardware - e.
Software skins can be downloaded, for free or pay, for most popular applications. These are manifestations not only of who those individuals are, their past and present, and their affiliations Kleine et al. Whereas the previous arguments discuss psychological needs for aesthetic environments and motivation to possess, buy and use aesthetic products, the current argument is based on the consequences of aesthetic stimuli. Those consequences are based on the idea that aesthetic impressions can be very fast.
These very fast impressions are the first opportunity we have to form an attitude towards an object e. Those initial attitudes are likely to form at a relatively subconscious level and therefore may be relatively uniform across people, relative to more elaborated evaluations Kumara and Gargb, The primacy of first impression on attitudes is well documented in social science research.
Such preferences for aesthetic appearance may be the result of evolutionary adaptation Rhodes, Research has documented numerous contexts in which people with good looks enjoy preferential treatment in the labor market Hamermesh and Biddle, , in credit markets Ravina, , and even in the classroom Hamermesh and Parker, We also know that people try to actively improve how they appear to others in order to gain benefits or to avoid sanctions Jones, Such attempts can be found, for example, in how people try to improve information about things under their responsibility e.
Similarly, the way things appear may influence our attitudes towards them. For example, Reimann et al found that products with aesthetic packages are chosen over less expensive products with well-known brands in standardized packages. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the visual aesthetics of interactive systems, both hardware and software, may affect our evaluation of other system attributes. Finally, I would like to suggest that even if you are not convinced that aesthetics is a pillar of good design or that aesthetics fulfill psychological needs and influence attitudes and decision making, its practical significance is hard to deny.
There is ample daily life evidence that illustrate this point. Here, I would like to suggest two aspects of this perspective. The first describes the importance of aesthetics as a differentiating factor between similar products. The second argument suggests that aesthetics and information technology are already profoundly intertwined in current socio-technical processes. Thus, not only is it unwise to ignore aesthetics in information technology, we are in fact required to pay more attention to it, to further study its relationships with other relevant aspects of the HCI field, and to improve its integration in the design of interactive systems.
The weight of the IT industry has shifted over the last fifty years from emphasizing organizational number crunching to supporting organizational and personal decision making and productivity to being fully integrated in consumer and entertainment products. The list of successive companies that dominated the IT industry during this time frame - IBM, Microsoft and Apple - tells the story succinctly. The accelerated process of consumer-centeredness and commoditization of interactive technologies, partially described already byNorman , increases the importance of aesthetics as a differentiating factor between competing products increases.
In that industry, much of the differentiation between brands and models is now based on aesthetic creativity or imitations of aesthetic exemplars. Today we are surrounded by similarly high-performance interactive consumer products - such as smart phones and tablet computers. Thus, aesthetic design is gaining acceptance as a differentiating strategy or tactic Simonson and Schmitt, ; Luchs and Swan, ; Reimann et al. The iPhone is a good example of how a phone manufacturer uses visual aesthetics as a differentiating factor - in everything from the actual phone to its packaging.
B : The BeoCom corded analogue telephone used visual aesthetics to differentiate itself from and compete against popular telephones like the Western Electric Model There is a long tradition of relationship between aesthetics and technology Petroski, ; Norman, , which became more pronounced during the rapid technological developments of the 20th century. Advanced technologies helped in producing aesthetic forms that could not have been made before at least not on a mass scale , and aesthetic concepts were borrowed from one technological field e.
Today, it is common for design trends to appear at the same time in multiple industries Gladwell, In the age of information technology, such relationships become more symbiotic than ever. One of the unique characteristics of information technology is that it is particularly friendly to aesthetic applications Postrel, Relative to traditional methods it supports effortless creation, manipulation, and transmission of aesthetic materials. Digital technology and applications enable designers in various industries many more design options, and much more time to explore all of those options in order to create more appealing products.
Perhaps even more importantly, these technologies offer ordinary people tools that help creating and communicating aesthetics on a revolutionary scale. Lest our position be misconstrued to mean that advocating aesthetic design implies that practical concerns should prevail over all other considerations, it is important to note that the reality depicted above also carries a moral dimension. Aesthetic and ethic considerations in design need not contradict Liu, In turn, feeling respected and appreciated, people will be more inclined to take care of an aesthetic and well maintained environment Saito, In short, aesthetic design works for the betterment of our lives.
Research on and around the various aspects of visual aesthetics in HCI can be roughly divided into four main categories that deal with various aspects of the aesthetic process:.
These categories can be seen as part of the schematic process described in Figure 8. I will elaborate on each of these elements below and present empirical studies that have handled these issues. Copyright terms and licence: Unknown pending investigation. Some relevant research issues for each category are included. What makes an interactive system look more or less aesthetic? What makes one system look aesthetic in a particular way and another system look aesthetic in a different way?
These are questions of the utmost practical importance. If we could only decipher the aesthetic code! Fortunately, the quest for the Holy Grail of visual aesthetics is beyond our reach for at least the foreseeable future, so there is plenty of room for experimentation, new approaches and ample research. In studying this category, we naturally look first at design guidelines and insights.
However, the very broad scope of design possibilities, the creative nature of design work, and the almost unbounded relationships between design elements make it extremely difficult to isolate specific design aspects which may be considered aesthetic or which may influence aesthetic perceptions one way or another. It is probably possible to categorize aesthetic design guidelines from the very broad and abstract e. They can be expressed in terms of object properties or in terms of motivational and emotional mediators e.
At the beginning of this section, we posed two different questions. The first question -- what makes a system look more or less aesthetic -- has probably been more central to aesthetic and design research over the years.
Park et al. Other, more high-level responses to this question include contrasting attributes such as novelty and typicality Veryzer and Hutchinson, ; Hekkert et al.
Hekkert et al. Similarly, van Schaik and Ling suggest that design qualities, which they term pragmatic and hedonic, affect perceptions of overall beauty. Some researchers argue for the prospect of identifying formal, objective, attributes that determine aesthetic judgment, and which will ultimately lead to automatic composition or checks of displays such as web pages e.
Similarly, Csikszentmihalyi argues that formal aspects only rarely make objects valuable to their owners. He speculates that people do not perceive formal attributes such as order or disorder in design according to mathematical principles. Still, despite the apparent subjective and context-dependent nature of aesthetic processes, studies have continued the quest for basic and formal principles of aesthetic properties of interactive systems.
Such principles can be expressed as computational models aimed at achieving optimal design spaces. For example, Bauerly and Liu suggest that in basic images, symmetry and balance affect aesthetic appeal ratings.
However, they also found that the strong relationship found between symmetry and aesthetic appeal diminished when tested with more realistic i. Other approaches to predicting aesthetic evaluations have been proposed in the context of photographs. For example, the Aquine project Datta et al. However, as mentioned above, the problem of finding universal visual aesthetic guidelines and laws is further exacerbated in the field of HCI because of the variety of applications and products and the uniqueness of so many use contexts.
In addition, the dynamic nature of contemporary society and fashion-like approach to the design of many interactive devices and applications make aesthetics a moving and often unpredictable target Korman-Golander, These constraints lead us to the second question.
Here, researchers have tried to break down the aesthetic stimuli to sub-dimensions which may be more or less suitable for various contexts or to individual tastes.
Such dimensions often emerged out of subjective evaluations of aesthetic stimuli. For example, Park et al. Classical aesthetics corresponds to traditional views of aesthetic - symmetrical, clean and organized design. One of the important aspects of that study was the demonstration that these aesthetic dimensions are correlated as expected with various interaction outcomes such as perceived usability, pleasing interaction and perception of service quality.
Similarly, Moshagen and Thielsch have suggested four aesthetic dimensions: Simplicity , diversity, colorfulness and craftsmanship. All four dimensions were associated with appeal. This category deals with one of the most basic questions in the field of visual aesthetics: How people process and evaluate visual stimuli in aesthetic terms? Detailed accounts of such processes are likely not specific to HCI, and thus have been and probably will be left to researchers in more basic research fields.
Findings from such research are presented below to inform the readers about developments in this field. One of the most influential accounts of aesthetic processes was articulated by Norman , who suggested that aesthetic perceptions and evaluations can be explained by considering cognitive and emotional processes at three different levels, which he termed visceral, behavioral and reflective.
Visceral reactions to stimuli in the environment including aesthetic stimuli have developed to a large extent through evolutionary mechanisms, are performed very rapidly at almost instinct level, with little or no cognitive processing Ortony et al. Thus, reactions at this level are quite automatic. The other two levels are characterized by increasingly more elaborated and distinct motivational, emotional and cognitive structures and processes, as well as by slower reactions to stimuli, tendency towards more optimal as opposed to satisficing responses and greater individual variability Ortony et al.
Studies of aesthetic reaction have been performed on all levels e. Low level research is characterized by processes that last a few tenths of a second. Another finding at this level argues for a positive effect of prototypicality on aesthetic evaluations through the ease fluency of information processing Winkielman et al. In the field of HCI, several studies have examined aesthetic evaluations after very short exposure to web pages.
One of the differences between the basic research and HCI research at this level is that the latter usually involves more ecologically representative i. Lindgaard and colleagues Lindgaard et al. While some research questions the robustness of these findings, other research supports the notion that we do not need more than half a second to form first, and stable, aesthetic impressions of the web page Lindgaard et al.
Research on aesthetic processing at higher levels involves more elaborated considerations. In general, Leder et al. Although studying higher-level processes of aesthetic evaluations may be of interest to the HCI community, research thus far has concentrated more on the role of aesthetic processing as a mediator between design stimuli and outcome variables such as user engagement and trust e.
Similarly, Thuring and Mahlke propose a model which integrates the effects of perceived system qualities, including visual aesthetics, on emotions and on appraisal of the system.
Research on more long-term, reflective aesthetic evaluation is even scarcer. Recently studies on aesthetic aspects of interactive systems began to adopt a more time-dependent approach Schaik and Ling, and to employ longitudinal methods e.
This section deals with what is probably the most practical question in relation to visual aesthetics in HCI: What are the effects of aesthetic perceptions and evaluations on HCI-related variables?
Whereas the question of how aesthetic evaluations are formed is relatively general, the consequences of these evaluations can be highly domain-specific. Indeed, research in HCI primarily views the value of visual aesthetics, whether explicitly or implicitly, not as an end in itself but rather as a mediating force between 1 characteristics of the designed system or product, and 2a other perceived attributes of the product or 2b behavioral consequences of aesthetic evaluations.
Early studies Kurasu and Kashimura, , Tractinsky, offered intriguing findings regarding positive association between visual aesthetics and a focal HCI variable - usability. While early research appeared to accept intuitively the premise that aesthetic evaluations are fast enough to precede evaluations of other related variables, later research has demonstrated that this is indeed the case Lindgaard et al.
These findings have further motivated the exploration of potential consequences of aesthetic design, a research area which have probably been the busiest of the four categories outlined in our framework.
The range of variables covered by these studies includes evaluations of other system attributes, overall evaluations of the system, attitudes towards organizations represented by the system, and satisfaction from the interaction.
Studies have also begun exploring the role of affect and emotions in mediating how perceived aesthetics influence those outcomes. The studies represent a partial and probably arbitrary list. Affect and emotions are oft-cited corollaries of visual aesthetics. The effects of attractive and appealing design on emotions were demonstrated in various studies, including Thuring and Mahlke in the domain of portable music players, Porat and Tractinsky and Cai and Xu in the domain of online shopping.
First, as mentioned earlier, positive affect contributes to positive experience and well-being, and as such is an end in itself. Second, emotions have a role in affecting subsequent information processing, appraisal of other system attributes, and forming attitudes towards the system Sun and Zhang, Trustworthiness was a variable that was studied early as an outcome of visual design in the domain of online banking Kim and Moon, In other studies on website design, Cyr et al. A related variable to trust- reputation of an academic department - was correlated with aesthetics in a study of websites Hartmann et al.
The effects of visual appeal on perceived usability was examined in several studies. Lee and Koubek found high positive correlations between usability and aesthetics before and after use. Like Tractinsky et al. Similar findings were obtained by Sauer and Sonderegger In another study, Sonderegger and Sauer found that participants using cell phones with high visual appeal rated them as more usable than participants using the unappealing devices.
In a study of mobile phones, Quinn and Tran found that attractiveness accounted for as much variance in the SUS scores as effectiveness and efficiency. On the other hand, various studies found weaker or no such associations between visual aesthetics and usability e.
The mixed findings suggest that the presumed association between perceptions of aesthetics and usability may not be universal. We elaborate on this point when we discuss the next category. Visual aesthetics are considered a major force influencing perceptions of product character Hassenzahl, ; Krippendorff, or brand personality Park et al.
And Schmitt and Liu found that users are willing to sacrifice loading speed for a more aesthetically appealing webpage. Recent studies have started looking for empirical evidence regarding this question e. In a study of 11 data visualization techniques, Cawthon and Moere found positive relation between aesthetic data visualizations and performance of data retrieval tasks. Sonderegger and Sauer and Quinn and Tran similarly found more effective task performance when using attractive versus unattractive mobile phones.
Van Schaik and Ling , however, did not find relation between perceptions of classical and expressive aesthetics and performance measures. In a recent survey of the user experience UX literature, Bargas-Avila and Hornbaek found that emotions, enjoyment and aesthetics are the most frequently assessed dimensions of UX. Considering that aesthetics is also an antecedent of the other two dimensions, it appears that its role in influencing the UX is large indeed.
To a large extent, it is related to almost all the ideas expressed in this chapter. Linkages between perceived beauty and various outcomes or between design attributes and aesthetic perceptions, even if backed up by solid research evidence, common sense, or philosophical arguments, should not be considered universal or deterministic Sutcliffe, First, as mentioned in the previous subsection, against studies that empirically found associations between aesthetic evaluations and evaluations of other perceived system attributes, such as usability, there are studies that found weaker or no such associations, indicating that at least under certain circumstances they do not hold.
Third, for all we know about socio-technical phenomena, it makes little sense that such deterministic relationships exist in a complex reality that involves individual, social and technological forces. Thus, adopting a contingent approach to the study of visual aesthetics would probably be more productive in describing if and how aesthetic evaluations mediate between various antecedents and consequences.
The challenge is then, to identify and examine how various factors serve to alter or moderate the aesthetic process. In Tractinsky I have provided a partial list of such potential moderators. The list included the type of system used a typology that can span multiple dimensions such as consumer product vs. Individual differences constitute an interesting group of potential moderators, because people vary greatly in their sensitivity to aesthetic stimuli and in their aesthetic preferences e.
Jacobsen study found consistent intra-individual aesthetic judgments but strong inter-individual differences in beauty judgments. Pandir and Knight also found disagreement on aesthetic preferences in a study of different websites. He argues that in certain domains e. Ben-Bassat et al found that people weighed more usability over aesthetic factors when faced with a performance-oriented task, and Van Schaik and Ling demonstrated that attractiveness ratings were affected by providing context for the evaluation task.
In online shopping environments Cai and Xu found that the effect of expressive aesthetics on shopping enjoyment was stronger when shopping for hedonic products compared to utilitarian products.
Individual factors may also affect how anteceding variables e. In the domain of web-site design, Park et al. Attributes of the choice process were found to moderate the relation between aesthetic evaluation and product choice, especially when users are required to trade-off aesthetic for other system qualities.
For example, Ben-Bassat et al found that system preference or choice were affected by aesthetics under ordinary conditions e. Diefenbach and Hassenzahl showed that under a beauty-usability trade-off, although people may prefer more beautiful products to more usable ones, they choose the more usable product if they cannot justify choosing the more beautiful one.
Cross cultural studies have shown that national and professional cultures affect various relationships between aesthetic evaluations, their antecedents and their consequences. Several studies have demonstrated this moderating effect in the context of websites. For example, Cyr found effects of visual design on trust in China but not in Canada or Germany, and Cyr et al found different reactions to web-site color appeal in Canada, Germany and Japan.
The review above presented the results of empirical studies that examined antecedents and effects of visual aesthetics in HCI and various contingencies that moderate the relationship along this aesthetic process.
In this section I would like to discuss several methodological issues and suggestions for future research in this area. The review of research in the field uncovered several methodological issues that may also be involved in masking effects along the aesthetic process. One such aspect concerns evaluations that are more nuanced than overall aesthetic evaluations, which are quite common in the studies surveyed in this chapter.
Studies that look for evaluations of aesthetic sub dimensions e. A related issue deals with the measurement of visual aesthetics evaluations or judgment. In the field of HCI, aesthetic evaluations were measured by a single item and by multiple-item scales. For example, Kurosu and Kashimura Tractinsky , Schenkman and Jonsson , Hassenzahl and Monk , and Sonderegger and Sauer have used a single item asking about the beauty of the various applications and interactive products.
While multiple item scales are generally regarded as more reliable measures, single item scales have some practical advantages. In particular, the use of single items in the study of aesthetics allows quicker responses to stimuli in studies that focus on swift aesthetic responses Lindgaard et al. The tension between scientific directives and practical constraints may not be as severe as it first appears.
Studies suggest that when dealing with a concrete object e. This point may be worth further research for corroboration, but if correct, future scientific and practical studies would be able to safely use single item measures of visual aesthetics. Research on visual aesthetics in HCI has employed a mix of experimental and correlational designs. Because some of the most interesting aspects of visual aesthetics research involve questions of cause and effect, experimental studies would appear to provide the most conclusive evidence.
It is straightforward to study basic and relatively simple design effects e. However, it becomes increasingly more difficult if we want to study the effects of aesthetic design using more complex and ecologically valid stimuli, like those used in correlational studies e. Thus, employing experimental designs using elaborated and realistic stimuli is a major challenge. Ideally, to test causal effects studies would manipulate design attributes independently of each other to separate aesthetic perceptions from perceptions of other system attributes.
In practice, however, this is very difficult to accomplish due to the a priori association of these attributes Moshagen et al. One frequent consequence of attempting to achieve this independent aesthetic manipulation is that it creates a relatively small variance in the manipulated stimuli otherwise, strong aesthetic manipulations might also cause differences in other experimental factors.
The danger is that small variance and the lack of strong aesthetic condition would in turn weaken the effects of visual aesthetics. This would increase the effect size of the aesthetic manipulation. On the other hand, such a procedure usually requires pre-experimental exposure to a set of potential aesthetic stimuli. This process may later interact with the experiment e. This chapter has reaffirmed that visual aesthetics is associated with a range of HCI-related variables.
However, it is also apparent that our understanding of the contingent nature of the processes that surround visual aesthetics is still limited. Thus, further exploring these contingencies i. Studies are also characterized by providing participants a limited set of aesthetic stimuli to choose from. The problem with such sets is that they do not necessarily include designs that are viewed by the participants as beautiful. In addition, such studies rarely represent reflective aesthetic value to individual participants.
Such stimuli may be adequate for creating short term impressions, but they are hardly adequate for assessing contemplative evaluations and longer term evolvement of aesthetic processes. Thus, to expand the picture of visual aesthetics in HCI, future research should emphasize more reflective evaluation and contemplation of designed products and environments.
Another research topic that has yet to receive attention is the dis connect between designers and users. In other design disciplines, studies have found significant differences in aesthetic evaluation between laypeople and designers e.
In HCI such differences were found by Korman-Golander between designers and software engineering students in assessments of web-site design trends. Similarly, Inbar et al. To date, I am aware of only a few studies e. In his seminal work on the extended self, Belk listed various product categories in which there is significant image congruity between a brand or a product category and self images of owners.
The list does not include IT products, but there are good reasons to expect that such congruity holds, for example, in the choice of personal computing, smart phones, media players, software, etc. We may then explore what role visual aesthetics plays in motivating people to choose those interactive media. Several studies have recently taken on this challenge. Similarly, Lindgaard et al. However, it seems that there is ample room for continuous research on the mechanisms that underlie these relationships.
In particular, studies about the interplay of emotional and cognitive factors Sun and Zhang, ; Thuring and Mahlke, at the three levels of processing Norman, are sorely needed. Studies of visual aesthetics in HCI have for the most part concentrated on the relatively stable properties of the user interface design. Little attention was paid to dynamic aspects of visual aesthetics.
With the increased embedding of dynamic visualizations , video clips and various animations in interactive systems we need to have a better grasp of their aesthetic qualities Chen, Some initial steps in this direction can be found in a study of perceived aesthetic dimensions of animations, done in the context of in-car presentation of eco-driving information Tractinsky et al. These factors may include differences in sensitivity to visual aesthetics, different weighing of visual aesthetics when appraising systems and products, and different notions of what is considered beautiful.
Such studies could explore why and how people personalize interactive systems and products e. Interest in visual aesthetics in HCI has grown considerably over the last 15 years. From a short conference paper that reported correlations between perceived aesthetics and apparent usability Korosu and Kashimura, to a rich field of inquiry.
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