In a study by Antonella De Angeli, Alistair Sutcliffe and Jan Hartmann done at the University of Manchester, the three concluded that the perception of information quality is affected in a manner resembling the halo effect in person perception. The halo effect or halo error, given its name by psychologist Edward Thorndike, is a “cognitive bias in which our judgments of a person’s character can be influenced by our overall impression of him or her” and “can be found in a range of situations—from the courtroom to the classroom and in everyday interactions.” In Thorndike’s first study done in 1920, he tasked two commanding officers with evaluating their soldiers in terms of physical qualities by rating their “neatness, voice, physique, bearing and energy,” along with their personal qualities in terms of “dependability, loyalty, responsibility, selflessness and cooperation.” What he discovered was that “the correlations were too high and too even,” meaning that a high score in a physical quality would trend across all the other results, more specifically, those relating to personal qualities. Conversely, a negative attribute would correlate with the rest of that soldier’s results. What’s interesting is that these results aren’t limited exclusively to likeability. Attractiveness also produces a halo effect. In 1972, Dion K. K., Berscheid E. and Walster E. conducted an experiment at the University of Minnesota where participants evaluated the photos of an attractive individual, an average one and an unattractive individual along with 27 personality traits like altruism, assertiveness, stability and so forth. Participants were then asked to predict the future happiness the photos’ subjects would have in regards to marital, parental, social, professional and overall happiness. What the results overwhelmingly showed was that participants believed that attractive subjects would have more desirable personality traits than their average and unattractive counterparts.

One of the takeaways from the first study I mentioned, done by De Angeli, Sutcliffe and Hartmann, suggests that there’s a correlation between the aesthetic qualities of an interface, its perceived usability and the overall user satisfaction with that system. With a more aesthetically pleasing site, users tend to find the website more credible and easier to use. Noam Tractinsky would later prove that this phenomenon is not culture specific. According to Donald A. Norman, the writer of Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, “The result is that everything has both a cognitive and  an affective component – cognitive to assign meaning, affective to assign value. You cannot escape affect: it is always there. More important, the affective state, whether positive or negative affect, changes how we think.”

The caveat is that beauty is contextual.

Though attractive products are perceived as easier to use, purchase decisions are based on actual usability. They are conceptually at least because I still don’t know what my girlfriend bases hers on. Just kidding. But ease of use is measured as having a smaller learning curve. It’s efficient and memorable, and it requires less training and support. That being said, the frequency of error should be low, as should the subsequent consequence. Norman writes, “The human perceptual and attentional systems are tuned to notice discrepancies and problems, not that which is expected. So we tend to notice things that distract, that impair our ability to get something done, or in the realm of aesthetics, that are particularly distasteful. We do indeed notice especially attractive items (or people), but quite often the attention drawn to the appearance can be detrimental to the task. So the best designs are often the ones that are least noticed.” On a site, users want problems solved whether that takes form as an answer to a question or a product or service that makes their lives easier. The process that provides that solution should be as painless as possible. Ideally, given the option to have a do-over, a user would still opt for your product over that of a competitor’s.

It’s important to understand that how we perceive a site evokes an array of emotions and attitudes that affect our attitude towards the content, the products being sold, the company itself as well as its credibility. A site’s attractiveness will draw users in and will incentivize them to stay, but it doesn’t complete a site on its own. Without usability and substance, those very users will grow listless and move on. Joel Spolsky argues that, “Usability is not everything. If usability engineers designed a nightclub, it would be clean, quiet, brightly lit, with lots of places to sit down, plenty of bartenders, menus written in 18-point sans-serif, and easy-to-find bathrooms. But nobody would be there. They would all be down the street at Coyote Ugly pouring beer on each other.”

Aesthetics and usability form the user experience, and as that’s optimized, your site’s likeability and credibility increase, so does the likelihood that a user will complete a transaction. If you’re looking for some professional help, you can contact us here. We’d love to hear the details of your next project. And not to be immodest, but we’re pretty good at what we do.

Photo Credit: Buzzle.com