In my psych. of HCI seminar, we were talking about the effect of aesthetics on perceived usability. That made me think of an article that appeared in Arts & Letters Daily a while back that discussed studies about attractiveness in human-human interaction. Given that one of the other topics considered in the class is how people tend to treat computers as social agents, I wondered if it might be effective to look at traditional characteristics of human attractiveness for ideas when designing aesthetically interfaces. One of the main characteristics of attractiveness that I remembered from this paper is that of symmetry. When I brought this up as a measurable attribute of human attractiveness, my class found it rather amusing. Anyway, below is the link to the article:
Looks Do Matter
Wilson Quarterly