Video streams
Paul Hekkert
What is beneficial is pleasant
Starting from the disputed claim “What is beautiful is usable” (Tractinsky, Katz & Ikar, 2000; Hassenzahl, 2008), in this presentation we will argue that both concepts in the simile have been understood too narrowly to grasp the rationale behind this link. If we extend visual beauty to pleasantness in all sensory domains and consider usability as the design counterpart of an environment that is appropriate for our actions, we can start to understand when usable designs are considered beautiful, and when they are not.
Thomas Jacobsen
Neuro-cognitive psychology of aesthetics
Thomas Jacobsen (PhD) is Associate Professor of Psychology (Oberassistent) at the Institute of Psychology of the University of Leipzig, Germany. His main research focus is on the Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience of pre-attentive cognitive processing of language and non-language sounds. He also works on the Neurocognitive Psychology of Aesthetics.
Meinald T. Thielsch
Experimental approaches on aesthetics and usability
Dr. Meinald T. Thielsch studied psychology at the University of Münster. Since 2004 he works as a research associate in the Psychological Institute 1 at the chair of psychological diagnostics and media psychology. He did his PHD in psychology and information systems, his doctoral thesis deals with the topic of web site aesthetics. HCI and especially web site aesthetics, usability and online research are the main research interests of Meinald Thielsch, furthermore he is working in the area of psychological diagnostics, e-learning and evaluation. Besides his university work he consults companies, mostly in the area of software development and web site improvement.
Christoph Johannes Häberle
Colour preferences, social conventions and individual aesthetic perception
For more than ten years Christoph Häberle, expert in colours, is engaged in the subject of colour preferences in various "fields of life", the consumption attitudes of different target groups and people’s general treatment of colours. For two years he studied in more than ten countries in Europe in real every day situations colour treatment in different cultural communities, their colour preferences and colour decisions – in social every day life as well as in the domain of modern art, design and architecture. His results show clearly that there exists a very different understanding and affinity to colours, individually as well as collectively. Only he who understands the principle according to which people encode signs, is able to communicate well-aimed.
Peter Wright
The aesthetics of experience-centred design
Peter Wright is Research Professor in Human-centred Design in the Cultural, Communications and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University. His background is applied cognitive science and he has a PhD in experimental psychology. He has worked in departments of psychology, linguistics, computer science and now, art and design. His research areas are human-computer interaction and user experience research. He has developed new methods for studying human-technology interactions including methods based on the principles of distributed cognition, participatory design, and experience-centred design. In 2003 in co-edited Funology which characterised state of the art research in affective interaction design. In 2004 he co-authored, Technology as Experience (MIT Press) which sets out conceptual and philosophical foundations for experience-centred design. His recent research awards include, Theory and method for experience-centred design, Landscape of Cross-generational Engagement, My Exhibition, and Technologies to Support the Self-management of Rehabilitation Therapy.
Marc Hassenzahl
Consequences of beauty
The visual appearance of an interactive product – its beauty (or the lack of it) – has a deep effect on how we think about the product. Beauty, for example, adds value; at least some people are willing to pay a little bit more for a beautiful product. But it also has consequences beyond this. The talk will present and discuss empirical evidence for the diverse consequences of beauty, thereby demonstrating the multi-faceted and profound impact beauty has on the way we perceive and evaluate products.
Axel Platz
Beauty matters – but what the hell is beauty?
While experts are probably broadly agreed on the basic principles of aesthetics, there are substantial differences with regard to their visual interpretation. In turn, designers and public differ widely in terms of conventions of perception and taste and consequently in their evaluation of the design object. As the relevance of visual design is no longer called in question, as product quality is also a question of beauty, the real question is: What is beauty?
Kees Overbeeke
Designing for aesthetics in interaction
The Department of Industrial Design goes for the impossible: to reconcile reason and intuition, abstraction and practice, in the pursuit of highly-interactive dynamic systems. The challenge for the Designing Quality in Interaction group is to answer the question How to design for interaction with highly interactive dynamic systems?
