The influence of the search complexity and the familiarity with the website on the subjective appraisal of aesthetics, mental effort and usability

Abstract

The user experience is defined as ‘a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service’ (ISO FDIS 9241-210, 2009) [Ergonomics of human system interaction Ergonomics of human system interaction – Part 210: human-centered design for interactive systems (formerly known as 13407). Switzerland: International Organization for Standardization]. Accordingly, some authors have argued that an interactive system has to be evaluated not only with regard to its usability and utility levels, but also with regard to emotional, attractiveness, and aesthetic levels. These last aspects play a substantial role on the general assessment of such systems and on the satisfaction of users. Some studies focused on the immediate aesthetic subjective perception of systems, on their subjective usability and preference perceptions. However, few studies, at least to our knowledge, have been focused on the reverse, that is, on the effect of difficulties experienced by individuals in using systems on the aesthetic appraisal. The present study aimed at determining the role of familiarity level with the website and the search complexity on the search performance and post-experiment appraisals of aesthetics, usability, and mental effort. The main results revealed that the search complexity affected negatively search performance, whereas the familiarity level affected only the re-reading of the search questions. The post-use assessments of aesthetics, mental effort, and usability satisfaction were affected by search performance. In addition, these variables were correlated except the expressive aesthetics, which seemed to be independent from the search performance and other subjective appraisals. Then, we discuss these findings in line with prior studies and present future ways of research.

Keywords:

• post-use appraisals
• aesthetics
• familiarity
• complexity
• usability
• mental effort

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Professor Noam Tractinsky for his insightful comments on the draft of this paper. We also thank the students for their participation in this research.

Notes

1. The extraneous cognitive load is linked to the way in which the information is presented. This corresponds to the cognitive resources involved in processing information that is not in fact essential to understanding. A high extraneous cognitive load is, therefore, linked to the inappropriate presentation of information. Whereas the intrinsic cognitive load is linked to the difficulty of the task to be performed, such as the content to be processed, or to the amount of elements that the individual has to process simultaneously in working memory.

2. The website of the University has changed in November 2012. The experiment was carried out with the prior version of the website (see Figure 1 for an example of web page).

3. The correct answers were not considered since the impossible searches had no answer.

4. The correlations between the re-readings and the subjective scales were less strong than those between the search time and the subjective scales.