Aesthetic impressions are fast, enduring and consequential

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. Studies of brain activity suggests that aesthetic impressions form within 300ms to 600ms (H�fel and Jacobsen, 2007). Research on people’s impressions of web pages demonstrated that reliable and consistent aesthetic judgments are formed with exposure of less than 500 milliseconds (Lindgaard et al., 2006; Tractinsky et al., 2006). These very fast impressions are the first opportunity we have to form an attitude towards an object (e.g., an interactive system), whose other qualities are usually concealed until later time when opportunities to evaluate them arise (e.g., when trying to accomplish a task with the system). 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 & Gargb, 2010).�

The primacy of first impression on attitudes is well documented in social science research. Its most salient manifestation is expressed by the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype (Dion et al., 1972), which suggests that a person’s physical appearance affects how others view the person’s hidden qualities (e.g., personality traits). Such preferences for aesthetic appearance may be the result of evolutionary adaptation (Rhodes, 2006). Research has documented numerous contexts in which people with good looks enjoy preferential treatment in the labor market (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994), in credit markets (Ravina, 2008), and even in the classroom (Hamermesh & Parker, 2003).

We also know that people try to actively improve how they appear to others in order to gain benefits or to avoid sanctions (Jones, 1990). Such attempts can be found, for example, in how people try to improve information about things under their responsibility (e.g., at work) by presenting the information in more attractive formats (Tractinsky & Meyer, 1999). Such aesthetic improvements may pay off: research suggests that under ordinary conditions, aesthetic financial reports increase both novice and professional investors’ valuation of a firm (Townsend & Shu, 2010). Similarly, the way things appear may influence our attitudes towards them. By “things” we may refer to natural settings and objects such as landscapes (Porteous, 1996; Carlson, 2000) or to various sorts of designed environments (Gilboa and Rafaeli, 2003) and artifacts (Rafaeli & Vilnai-Yavetz, 2004). For example, Reimann et al (2010) 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. Hence, the suggestion that “beautiful is usable” that is, beautiful systems are considered by users to be more usable (Tractinsky et al., 2000).

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16