A Quality Model-based Approach for Measuring User Interface Aesthetics with Grace

Zen, Mathieu [UCL] Burny, Nicolas [UCL] Vanderdonckt, Jean [UCL]

User interface aesthetics, a particular sub-characteristic of the ISO 25010 software quality model, is correlated to the perceived or actual usability of a graphical user interface, its user experience, and trust. While many measures, such as balance, symmetry, proportion, alignment, regularity, and simplicity, can be computed, no consensus exists today on which measure to adopt, which formula to compute for each measure, and which interpretation to give for each computed formula. To accommodate these variations and to make the assessment explicit and interpretable, we present a quality model-based approach for measuring aesthetics that defines a quality function in terms of the formula of the measures, their weights, their composition, and their overall computation. This quality model is transformed into a configuration used by Grace, a web application developed for this purpose. When the measures, their formula, their weights, or the quality function change, the quality model changes, which is re-computed to compare it with any other model, thus making the measurement process explicit and interpretable. We apply this approach to a large dataset “Lab in the Wild” to investigate the correlations between aesthetic measures and perceived visual complexity and colorfulness. We discuss limitations through threats to validity.