research-article

The "Beauty Dilemma": beauty is valued but discounted in product choice

Authors:

Sarah Diefenbach,

Marc HassenzahlAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1419 - 1426

https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518916

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

The empirical study of aesthetics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is concerned with - among other topics - the relationship between beauty and usability and the general impact of beauty on product choice and use. Specifically, the present paper explores the notion of a "beauty dilemma" - the idea that people discount beauty in a choice situation, although they value it in general (i.e., they are not choosing what makes them happy). We explored this idea in three studies with a total of over 600 participants. Study 1 revealed a reluctance to pay for beauty due to its hedonic nature (i.e., associated with luxury etc.). Study 2 showed that people prefer a more beautiful product, but justify their choice by referring to spurious advantages in usability. Finally, Study 3 revealed that a choice situation which requires a trade-off between beauty and usability, and which offers no further way to justify choosing beauty, leads to a sharp increase in the preference of usability. The underlying reasons for this "beauty dilemma" and further implications are discussed.

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Cited By

Chaouali WSouiden N(2022)Design aesthetics in predominantly-utilitarian versus predominantly-hedonic services: the “what is beautiful is good” and “Ulysses” effectsJournal of Marketing Theory and Practice10.1080/10696679.2022.208511731:4(502-515)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/10696679.2022.2085117
Fahm A(2020)“Everything Has Beauty but Not Everyone Sees It”: An Islamic Alternative to Assessing BeautyJournal of Intercultural Communication Research10.1080/17475759.2020.173660149:3(211-226)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1736601
Raptis DPapachristos EBruun AKjeldskov J(2020)Why did you pick that? A study on smartwatch design qualities and people’s preferencesBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2020.183625941:4(827-844)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1836259
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

The "Beauty Dilemma": beauty is valued but discounted in product choice
1. Human-centered computing

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cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2009

2426 pages

ISBN:9781605582467

DOI:10.1145/1518701

General Chairs:
Dan R. Olsen
Brigham Young University
,
Richard B. Arthur
Brigham Young University
,
Program Chairs:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Saul Greenberg
University of Calgary

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 04 April 2009

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April 4 - 9, 2009

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CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,130 submissions, 25%;

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Cited By

Chaouali WSouiden N(2022)Design aesthetics in predominantly-utilitarian versus predominantly-hedonic services: the “what is beautiful is good” and “Ulysses” effectsJournal of Marketing Theory and Practice10.1080/10696679.2022.208511731:4(502-515)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/10696679.2022.2085117
Fahm A(2020)“Everything Has Beauty but Not Everyone Sees It”: An Islamic Alternative to Assessing BeautyJournal of Intercultural Communication Research10.1080/17475759.2020.173660149:3(211-226)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/17475759.2020.1736601
Raptis DPapachristos EBruun AKjeldskov J(2020)Why did you pick that? A study on smartwatch design qualities and people’s preferencesBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2020.183625941:4(827-844)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1836259
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Ghellal SMorrison ABrereton M(2017)The interpretative role of an experiencerProceedings of the 29th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/3152771.3152782(98-107)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2017
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Kakar A(2017)Investigating the Relationships Between the Use Contexts, User Perceived Values, and Loyalty to a Software ProductACM Transactions on Management Information Systems10.1145/30572718:1(1-23)Online publication date: 1-May-2017
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Pika ALeyer MWynn MFidge CHofstede AAalst W(2017)Mining Resource Profiles from Event LogsACM Transactions on Management Information Systems10.1145/30412188:1(1-30)Online publication date: 23-Mar-2017
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