This research was done with the intention of exploring what makes an interface beautiful and what makes an interface ugly. Five principles of interface beauty were proposed in this research: Clarity, Consistency, Familiarity, Novelty and Unity. The five principles were tested in a controlled environment with two interfaces for different purposes.

This is an exploratory research into the psychology of perceived beauty in digital interfaces. Of the five principles we could conclude that our participants were highly sensitive to the consistency and the unity in an interface. In other words, if an interface lacks of unity or consistency in its visual aspect users are more likely to express a negative reaction, than if an interface lacks of novelty.

For the experiment, two interfaces for two different purposes were presented to the participants of the experiment. One for a music player, the other one for an online TV device. Each interface was decomposed into several elements so it would break one principle while following the other four. So for each interface, six versions of the same interface were created, one following the five principles and one breaking a principle. Later on, each interface that broke a principle in question was compared against the interface that followed the five principles. This research was done under the supervision of Betsy van Dijk of the Human Media Interaction department of the University of Twente. The inspiration to produce this research was born after reading Denis Dutton book: The Art Instinct.

Name of the Project: Exploring Beauty in Visual Interfaces
Purpose: Educational
Client: Universiteit Twente (supervised by Betsy van Dijk)
Location: Enschede, The Netherlands
Date: May 2012
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Gijs Huisman for his input and opinion in the experiment procedure.