Using Aesthetic Measurement Application (AMA) to measure aesthetics of web page interfaces

Abstract

Aesthetics is vital in affecting users' usage in web interaction. In order to measure aesthetics, an application such as Aesthetic Measurement Application (AMA) needs to be created. In the effort of doing so, this article describes the accuracy of our AMA in measuring the aesthetic aspect by comparing the results of our application and users' perceptions in measuring the aesthetics of the web page interfaces. The web pages used in our study were Mandarin learning web pages that comprised of main pages, learning pages and exercise pages. For this research, the positions of objects, images element and texts element are defined as objects in a web page interface. The objects of the web pages were manipulated in order to produce the desired aesthetic values. The six aesthetics related elements used are balance, equilibrium, symmetry, sequence, rhythm, as well as order and complexity. The object modeling used as well as the process in developing this application were discussed in details. The steps on how to run our application were explained. This is to assist those who are interested may duplicate our study and improve the aesthetic measurement design in order to come up with a more ideal aesthetic measurement tool. © 2008 IEEE.