links for 2007-07-10

The importance of symmetry

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