"Cognitive science studies how people know things and aesthetics plays a critical role in cognitive processing."
A List Apart offers an interesting article by Stephen P. Anderson who delivers a compelling argument concerning the importance of aesthetic appeal in designing for the web.
"In other words, aesthetics is not just about the artistic merit of web buttons or other visual effects, but about how people respond to these elements. Our question becomes: how do aesthetic design choices influence understanding and emotions, and how do understanding and emotions influence behavior?"
1 comment:
Although I am very influenced by aesthetic nature of something, especially the aesthetic nature of websites, I don't know that others are. I believe that the majority of those that use web 2.0 are concerned with the information that they are trying to find, not the way that the information is presented to them.
I think that most people in general are affected by the way that their environment and the things in the environment looks however people begin to become comfortable with the general aesthetic standard of anything that you look at. A good example would be cubicles and office spaces. Because it is excepted, people everyday go to work in a corporate environment with rows and rows of cubicles and they sit in their cubicle and do their work, good work. Would their work be better if they were sitting in a beautiful office? Probably. But do they expect that? No. And do they think about that? Rarely. It doesn't affect their work because they know that their environment will not change. Same thing with the ugly websites, when you go to certain sites, you except them to be ugly, and because of that it doesn't influence them.
But I could be extremely wrong and I am making an assumption, and you could make a case very easily to contradict my option.
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