Objectives:
To determine whether the Aesthetics is truly an important aspect of mobile design, in the sense that it colors the way we perceive other qualities of the system. To propose recommendations on how the companies think and design the mobiles in future.
In earlier time not many people were interacting with mobile phones and if they did, those interactions were based on work-related (Business purposes). It seems quite natural then, that early Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which started at that time, drag to enable people to perform work-related tasks in an efficient and error free way. Today’s users know that Interface design can be visually appealing and entertaining. User’s wants to have eye catching features that can attract the end user in every way. Many IT products have become or are in the process of becoming commodities. Thus, differentiation based on aesthetics, like for many other commodities, becomes relevant, perhaps inevitable. Appearance and symbolic ownership may become as important as functionality or reliability.
As a result, the aesthetics of interactive products becomes more and more important for users and researchers. So as a community that takes pride in designing for people – usability professionals, should adopt a more comprehensive vision of their field that can allow the professionals to think in user point of view which can even go well beyond conventional concepts of usability.
Our research aim is to find out the Aesthetic importance on mobiles from different category wise. In order to achieve this aim of our research, we adopted the structured interview method. The questions were developed from studying the article, (Arguing for Aesthetics in Human-Computer Interaction, Noam Tractinsky). Initially the questions were made through referring the general market trend thereafter studying the above article motivated to design questionnaire for the analysis. When the questions were created, the samples have been shown to few public who felt that using high synonym word might not be understandable (for example “aesthetics” word changed inside the questions to physical appearance). Then the redrafted questionnaires were distributed to the people and verified the questionnaires. Finally we calculated the study report and made it compatible to work on the figures.
Data analysis and results:The statistical analysis methods have been adopted to calculate the correlation between the variables on our study. Categorization was then carried out for better comprehension and management of the data in order to come up with reliable conclusions. So have divided the data into 5 categories such as
1) General 2) sex 3) age 4) ethnicity 5) education. Question: How important do you think the first impression is?
On our general analysis and category wise we found that “First impression views“are important. This can further be checked by the below statistics. The graph explains about the number of people opted for the visual appearance factors.Question: Do you think that usability and beautiful appearance can co exist?Similarly, the research finds the importance of usability and beautiful appearance does Coexist from the below figures. Every category wise have shown correlations between them..(Figure: Usability and beautiful appearance)Question: Given sufficient time will you also base your decision on criteria other than beautiful appearance?Though there was not much of difference noticeable under general category but found drastic difference under sex wise. Here can see female taking 100% decisions other than appearance in contrast to males opting only 66.67% on appearance and 33.33% on rest.
Question: Do you gain Pleasure by possessing beautiful things?Also there is huge difference between sexes on “Gaining pleasure by possessing beautiful things?” Here 33.33% males have said no and in oppose, only 6.67% females have answered no.
From age factor also , can notice difference on “gaining pleasure?” the 18-24 age group have answered “yes“(100%) whereas above 24+ have answered 62.50% on “yes” and rest on “no”. The chart below shows the different opinions by age group on “First impression”.
(Figure: age 18 to 24)
(Figure: age above 24+)From above statistics it is clearly seen how youngsters (below 24) are thinking about the aesthetics, most of them wanted to have visual eye catching features and impressive things.
Conclusion: The result from the data analysis clearly shows that Aesthetics are important aspect on mobile design. This can be seen from the data voted by all categories. The findings prove that the aesthetics are being taken important in every way from giving first impression to decision making. Therefore, the companies can get better benefits from aesthetic point of view but also advisable to maintain the standards in terms of usability because from the findings can notice more people have voted for usability aspects as well. Also the standard of people do matter for designing the mobiles, as higher education are not too keen on the aesthetics, so needs to take care of the usability features in coming future.
Note: Figures will be updated shortly
vishnupria 
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