Aesthetics and Usability
Are pretty things easier (thus more likely) to be used. Current research seems to indicate that they are. If you actually care about people using your products / web sites - it bears paying attention to how things look.
Experiments done with ATM machines in Japan and replicated in Israel showed a strong correlation between aesthetics and usability. People could more easily use the machines which were more pleasantly designed.
Why is this? We don’t know, but like every blogger - I have a strong opinion.
First - people are not logical. They will swear that every decision they make is completely logical, but recent brain research shows that all decisions begin in the emotional region of the brain. We are the opposite of Vulcans. If people were logical, we’d all be using Unix and we’d all make great decisions.
Further research shows that people learn better in a positive emotional state. That’s no big surprise, except maybe to my 7th grade social studies teacher.
I believe that the vast majority of mental “processing” that we do happens on an unconscious level. Sometimes you’ll find a innovative product or web site that is so intutively designed that you can just use it. How did you figure it out? You didn’t consciously. The aesthetic resonated somehow with your neurons that allowed you to figure it out without consciously ruminating.
Aren’t aesthetics a matter of personal taste?
To some extent we do have personal and cultural preferences. However, there are testable principles of design that hold true fairly universally. Things like figure and ground, golden ratio proportions, alignment, and contrast which appear in purposeful design in every culture. Why is that? I believe we are innately attracted to certain aesthetic principles.
The golden ratio proportions can be found everywhere in nature, but also in classical paintings, ancient temple architecture, and in modern print layouts. Studies have shown that people prefer rectangles that have sides with lengths that are in the golden proportion. If we were logical, it would make no sense to prefer one rectangle to another. If aesthetics were completely cultural, things like the iPod wouldn’t become internationally recognized icons.
So, people find pretty things easier to use. Make your stuff pretty.
