"Beauty," Design

As promised, I am delving into aesthetics of the web. Just a little, though – it’s the equivalent of going swimming in the McKenzie in May (“My toes are in, dammit, I’m having fun”). We are going to take a quick look at color and layout and their effect on the audience, courtesy of researchers with long names.

In the article, Aesthetics and preferences of web pages Bo N. Schenkman and Fredrik U. Jonsson, the authors come to the conclusion that considering layout, text and graphics, “Beauty was an important predictor of the Overall Impression” (375).

This study was unique because participants weren’t allowed to control navigation of the sites themselves, therefore negating the affect “usability, information richness, loading speed and relevance” have on the aesthetic rating. Users tended to appreciate sites with columns, graphics and separate text (sorry, WordArt is not appreciated).

Finally, “for the first impression it is more advisable to have more illustrations than text. However, this last recommendation has to be balanced with the demands of the loading time of the computer, since it takes more time to download a web page full of graphics than to download a text page” (376). But, this point is becoming moot, as broadband connections are becoming more prevalent.

So, based on this reseach, what works (not what I think is ugly) is clean design that is graphic-laden. Sites that come to mind include adidas Originals Store, Levi’s Jeans and Style Wars 2005.