Design Criteria for Web Applications Adapted to Emotions

Abstract

Abstract. The main goal of this work is to identify a set of design criteria for Web applications taking into account the users' emotions. The results are based on the analysis of a user study with 50 participants who tested six Web interfaces, each one designed to elicit a specific emotion (hate, anxiety, boredom, fun, serenity, love). The design criteria applied to the six emotion-based Web interfaces were drawn from the results of a previous survey, which involved 57 different users, on the relationships between emotional state and Web interfaces. This initial survey asked the users to indicate the emotions most often associated with Web interaction, and then assign each emotion with some specific Web design characteristics. The resulting design criteria can form the basis for a set of emotion-related guidelines for Web application user interfaces.

Design Criteria for Stimulating Emotions in Web Applications

“…Unfortunately, such previous study [12] did not clarify if some aspects of Web design can be more important than others to stimulate a certain emotional state, so in this work we seek to address this issue. For this purpose, we have designed and implemented a Web application able to adapt its design to the emotional state selected by the user and performed a user test to check the validity of the design criteria applied.…”

“…Music streams can be exploited through the Spotify (http://www.spotify.com) widgets present in the interface. In particular, we designed two versions implemented through two CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) for each emotion: (a) the first version: applied design criteria similar to those in the previous user test [12], though improved based on the collected results, (b) the second option: similar to the first version but with different small aspects that resulted controversial regarding their emotional effectiveness in the previous user test (such as colours and visual characteristics, blurred or clear text and dimension of images & videos).…”

“…In fact, Internet is still full of Web sites (implemented also by professional designers) with banners, popups, media or layout and colour complexity, that often elicit unsuitable emotional reactions from visitors [1,2]. Different interfaces with poor usability can stimulate different negative emotional reactions, just as different usable interfaces can elicit different positive emotional states [12]. This denotes that there is a need to understand more the emotional impact of the various Web design criteria.…”

“…Previous work [12] investigated the impact of some Web design criteria to elicit specific emotions independently of the contents and the application domain. For this purpose, a survey and one user test were carried out.…”

Design Requirements for Web Applications to Affect the End User Emotional State

“…Boredom or fun depend on the way the contents are presented attractively. For each emotion, the users suggested us some Web design features as potentially able to stimulate the considered emotional state [7]. Even if the proposed Web design features are distinguishable, emotions close in the scale have some common features.…”