A study of attributes of affective quality affecting judgment of beauty for simple graphic user interfaces

Abstract

This article argues that aesthetic preference judgment might not depend on aesthetic prototypes, but on object’s affective qualities. That is, when an object is presented, one perceives not only its feature organization, but also the perceived affective quality where it presents in some specific situations. Therefore, this study tries to find out the attributes of affective qualities which would be factors influencing user aesthetic preferences for system interfaces. Item analysis, Factor analysis and Regression analysis, were conducted to find the typical attributes of affective quality which could significantly explain the variances of aesthetic preferences. The results showed that six adjective terms of affective quality can be used to predict beauty: “Delicate”, “Unique”, “Robust”, “Tight”, “Fierce”, “Mysterious”, “Assertive” and “Traditional”. The outcomes indicate that a delicate appearance of interactive skins is most important to design an aesthetic skin. The skin with the feelings of “Assertive”, and “Robust” are well received. However, designers have to avoid design a skin with a tight feeling.