A Few Notes on the Study of Beauty in HCI

Marc Hassenzahl’s (this issue) target article provides a refreshing and rich perspective on the study of beauty and its relations with other key human–computer interation (HCI) constructs. I appreciate the opportunity to comment on Marc’s article. On this occasion, I would like to clarify my position on issues related to the study of beauty in HCI. For me, the inquiry into the role of aesthetics in HCI has been—how symbolic—a struggle between logic and intuition. The logic of the HCI field (with very few exceptions), had marginalized aesthetics, often viewing it as standing in usability’s way. Intuition, however, based on my own experience and informal observations, had suggested otherwise. Although my co-authors and I should be held accountable for coining the “beautiful is usable” equation (Tractinsky, Shoval-Katz , & Ikar, 2000), our study, as well as a previous study (Tractinsky, 1997), were actually aimed at disproving such an equation. The earlier study was designed to show that the relation between perceived aesthetics and perceived usability of a design layout (Kurosu & Kashimura, 1995) was confined to a particular (aesthetic) culture. It didn’t work. In the second study we tried to demonstrate that these relations do not hold after users actually experience the system. This did not work either. Theunavoidable conclusionwas that at least something is goingonbetweenusHUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION, 2004, Volume 19, pp. 351–357 Copyright © 2004, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.