Beauty constructs for MP3 players

Abstract

This paper contributes to the current debate about the nature of beauty and aesthetics as they apply to interactive products. Current disagreement centres around the question of whether beauty should be viewed as a continuous property of objects or as a rare emotional response to object encounters. Here we develop a new perspective of beauty as a complex psychological construct, subject to competing influences from visible object properties such as shape and colour, and invisible object associations such as perceived ease of use and brand. We introduce a new methodology for examining such constructs based on a card sorting procedure, and use it to show how 36 participants think about the beauty of 35 MP3 players. One implication is that beauty may not correlate directly with preference. We also found that participants tended to evaluate the players holistically, applying similar categorisations to free sorts, beauty sorts and preference sorts. This involved a common polarisation between modern and post-modern forms as they have been found to apply to architectural styles.

Keywords:

• Aesthetics
• Beauty
• Facet theory
• HCI
• Interaction

Acknowledgement

This work has been part-funded and supported by Openia Limited (www.openia.com).