The Halo Effect on User Interfaces An evaluation of design strategies involving aesthetics and design metaphors

Abstract: This study has focused on the relation between aesthetics and usability within a user interface based on a design metaphor. Three designs with a tree metaphor and one design as a simple list has been used for evaluation. These designs have been evaluated by six usability experts with a heuristic inspection and by user testing. The heuristic inspection consisted of twelve specialized heuristics for smartphones. The user testing was done with a field-study and a think-aloud protocol. The results from both the heuristic evaluation and the user testing showed that the simple list design had the highest usability but one of the tree metaphor designs was the most aesthetically pleasing. However, the user did prefer the aesthetically pleasing design. This suggest that there is a relation between perceived aesthetics and perceived usability similar to the halo effect.