A blessing, not a curse: Experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance
Moshagen first author. 257 volunteers completed search tasks on a health information website in four versions, crossing high and low visual aesthetics with good and poor usability, with completion times and error rates as the measures. Usability affected both. Aesthetics helped performance only where usability was poor, which the authors describe as visual aesthetics compensating for poor usability by speeding task completion.
Moshagen first author. 257 volunteers completed search tasks on a health information website in four versions, crossing high and low visual aesthetics with good and poor usability, with completion times and error rates as the measures. Usability affected both. Aesthetics helped performance only where usability was poor, which the authors describe as visual aesthetics compensating for poor usability by speeding task completion.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-18.
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Moshagen, M., Musch, J., & Goeritz, A. S. (2009). A blessing, not a curse: Experimental evidence for beneficial effects of visual aesthetics on performance. Ergonomics, 52(10), 1311-1320. doi:10.1080/00140130903061717.