Aesthetic-Usability Effect

This principle has been described as looking into the way people perceive more-aesthetic designs as being more user friendly than less-aesthetic designs, whether they are or not. My opinion on this is that by designing under the influence of this principle I can manufacture products that will sell successfully. It is apparent that we live in a world were aesthetic designs receive more positive attitudes.

In the essay it was mentioned that this effect formed through evolution. This statement is still true in my opinion, as over time we have evolved within an ecosystem that includes animals which use intimidating looks as a warning or predatory defense. We have therefore been psychologically conditioned over time to believe less-aesthetic objects bring more hassle, explaining why most people prefer aesthetic design.

To prove that more-aesthetic design is more popular than less-aesthetic design I will do a comparison between the following two designs.

As you can see from the images of the two bikes one has the original paint scheme with the other having a basic black and white combination, Which would you chose? the design on the left is definitely more desirable as it has some colour to brighten up the bodywork and give it character. Colours allow a product to be personalised, creating bonds between the user and product. Customisation allows the users personality to reflect in the design and helps sell vast amounts of the products, an example of this is the Ipod nano shown in the link below.

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/home/shop_ipod/family/ipod_nano?cid=OAS-EMEA-KWG-UK_Top_KW_Exact-UK

Sometimes in design you want to keep things simple sticking to basic colour schemes but from now on I am going to create products which focus more on aesthetically pleasing designs, encouraging positive attitudes towards the products I produce.