Development and Validation of a Symmetry Metric for Interface Aesthetics

This article describes the experimental investigation of the effects of symmetry on judgments of interface aesthetics. Thirty compositions were developed in order to validate symmetry quantification algorithms with subjective aesthetic ratings. The same compositions were used in two experiments, one using basic black-and-white images, and the other using web pages. The images were rated by 16 subjects in each experiment using the ratio-scale magnitude estimation method against a benchmark image. Subjects also established an ordered list of the images according to their aesthetic appeal using the balanced incomplete block (BIB) ranking method. The results show that subjects are adept at rating symmetry about both horizontal and vertical axes and their ratings closely match the quantification algorithm. Additionally, the relation between the dominant symmetry value and aesthetic appeal shows that subjects preferred symmetric images over non-symmetric images for the black-and-white imagery. The development and validation of the symmetry metric is an important step towards developing quantitative evaluation metrics for interface aesthetics evaluation and design.