A blessing, not a curse: experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance.
The present experiment investigated the effect of visual aesthetics on performance. A total of 257 volunteers completed a series of search tasks on a website providing health-related information. Four versions of the website were created by manipulating visual aesthetics (high vs. low) and usability (good vs. poor) in a 2 x 2 between-subjects design. Task completion times and error rates were used as performance measures. A main effect of usability on both error rates and completion time was observed. Additionally, a significant interaction of visual aesthetics and usability revealed that high aesthetics enhanced performance under conditions of poor usability. Thus, in contrast to the notion that visual aesthetics may worsen performance, visual aesthetics even compensated for poor usability by speeding up task completion. The practical and theoretical implications of this finding are discussed.
Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany. morten.moshagen@uni-duesseldorf.de
Morten
M
Moshagen
Jochen
J
Musch
Anja S
AS
Göritz
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004954:Esthetics; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D055815:Young Adult