Attractive User Interfaces- Exploring what influences users' judgement about Interface designs

Prof. Alistair Sutcliffe

Manchester Business School, University of Manchester

Fri Jan 19 15:10:00 NZDT 2007 in Room 031, MSCS

Abstract

In this presentation I will describe a program of research on 'attractive users interfaces' which aims to understand the deeper cognitive mechanisms underpinning users' preferences for and behaviour with aesthetic interfaces and nature of 'user experience'. A theoretical framework, based on Payne et al's Adaptive Decision Maker theory will be described for assessing the attractiveness of websites, composed of criteria for content, usability, aesthetics, reputation, and customisation. The framework has been developed into a questionnaire and used to evaluate a series of websites which shared the same brand and content but differed in usability and aesthetic design. In three studies (Sutcliffe, Hartmann and De Angeli- Interact 2005, DIS 2006, CHI 2007), we have shown that users' perception and preference for aesthetically design web sites is subject to strong framing, context and halo effects, i.e. their preferences depend on their background and the task, while positive judgement of one attribute (aesthetics) positively influence judgement of others such as usability and content, even when objective measures showed one design to be worse, and the content of both sites was identical. This challenges Norman's and Tractinsky's view that 'what is beautiful is usable'. The implications of framing and halo effects on users' judgement of aesthetics will be discussed, followed by some more speculative thoughts on our current research which is expanding the framework to include presence, interaction and engagement.

Biography

Prof. Alistair Sutcliffe is Professor of Systems Engineering, in Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. He has been principle investigator on 15 EPSRC and European Union projects on requirements engineering, multimedia user interfaces, safety critical systems and cognitive modelling for information retrieval. Currently funded research projects include EPSRC/ESRC Developing theory for Evolving Socio-Technical Systems (TESS) which is investigating technology mediated social and work relationships based on Dunbar's Social Brain Theory; EPSRC E-Science project Adaptive Visualisation Tools for e-Science Collaboration (ADVISES) which is producing interactive visualisation tools for health informatics researchers and EPSRC Artificial Cultures which is researching evolutionary computing simulations for complex socio technical systems. His research interests span a wide area within Human Computer Interaction and Software Engineering. In HCI particular interests are interaction theory, and user interface design methods for the web, multimedia, virtual reality, safety critical systems and methods for usability evaluation. His research also covers application of cognitive theory to design, and design of complex socio-technical systems. In software engineering he specialises in requirements engineering methods and tools, scenario based design, knowledge reuse and theories of domain knowledge. Alistair Sutcliffe is a leading member of both the international HCI and requirements engineering communities, is the Program Chair for Requirements Engineering 07 and recently was Co-Chair of DIS2002. He serves on the editorial boards of ACM-TOCHI, REJ and JASE. Alistair Sutcliffe is founder of IFIP TC-13 Working Group 13.2 'Methodology for User Centred Design' and member of IFIP working groups 8.1 (information systems) and 2.9 (requirements engineering) and is the editor of the ISO standard 14915, on Multimedia user interface design. He has over 200 publications including five books and several edited volumes of papers and was awarded the IFIP silver core in 2000.