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Fuzzy Logic Approach For Visual Analysis Of Websites With K-means Clustering-based Color Extraction
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Abstract
Websites form the foundation of the Internet, serving as platforms for disseminating information and accessing digital resources. They allow users to engage with a wide range of content and services, enhancing the Internet's utility for all. The aesthetics of a website play a crucial role in its overall effectiveness and can significantly impact user experience, engagement, and satisfaction. This paper examines the importance of website design aesthetics in enhancing user experience, given the increasing number of internet users worldwide. It emphasizes the significant impact of first impressions, often formed within 50 milliseconds, on users' perceptions of a website's appeal and usability. We introduce a novel method for measuring website aesthetics based on color harmony and font popularity, using fuzzy logic to predict aesthetic preferences. We collected our own dataset, consisting of nearly 200 popular and frequently used website designs, to ensure relevance and adaptability to the dynamic nature of web design trends. Dominant colors from website screenshots were extracted using k-means clustering. The findings aim to improve understanding of the relationship between aesthetics and usability in website design.
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Researchers have been investigating image features to assess objects’ aesthetic quality for many years. However, the question of context-dependency of color aesthetics remains questionable. The current paper examines the context dependency of essential variables affecting aesthetic pleasantness - color harmonies and color impressions, on the example of art and fashion domains. For the experiments, we used a data set that includes a subset of the best artworks of all time - 1276 paintings of 10 artists from different movements and periods and a data set of 10,000 most liked fashion images. Based on our observations, we concluded that certain color impressions or associations are partially influenced by context and partially universal. However, color harmony is, to a large degree, universal. These findings can be of great use for fields dealing with aesthetics, such as e-commerce, marketing, architectural and interior design, product design, fashion, web design, art, and merchandising.
We listen to music every day and feel various emotions from different music, it brings us to the right mood and bonds us to other people and creates a shared experience. There is something special about music that influences our emotions. Depending on the situation and mental state different people may get affected diversely. However, we can extract common music emotion information even from people with diverse backgrounds and cultures. In this research paper, we develop a system that uses music to retrieve human emotions using k-Nearest Neighbors(kNN) machine learning algorithm and compare the classifier with others to find the most accurate. How do we define music as happy or sad? Low-level features such as beat, pitch, rhythm, valence and tempo which made up the music, are used in the classification of music emotion. For example, high pitched music or music with a high frequency is usually associated with happy and energizing state, and the opposite for slow music, which makes us feel sad and calm. Proposed system can be very useful in music-related systems and applications such as music retrieval, recommendation and understanding. Also, various disciplines such as psychology, physiology, musicology and cognitive sciences refer to music emotion recognition.
Today CBIR (content-based image retrieval) in contrast to conventional TBIR (text-based image retrieval) has become a focusing research area in image processing due to numerous application possibilities. These applications vary from medical and security to business and SNS applications, to name a few. Color is the most widely used image characteristic since it is independent of image resolution or orientation. There is no single best color representation. The target application has a big role in determining which color model is best to use. To speed up the retrieval time and get good accuracy, one must understand which color model to employ. In this paper, we provide a critical review of existing color models, explain their attributes, analyze them from various perspectives and provide a context-aware comparative evaluation. We study when and why certain color models outperform others in certain applications under certain circumstances. Color spaces described in this paper are not only well-known e.g., RGB, CMYK, HSV, and Munsell, but also novice systems, like fuzzy color models, that can process higher color semantic levels.
The first impressions of web pages presented to users was investigated by using 13 different web pages, three types of scales and 18 participants. Multidimensional analysis of similarity and preference judgements found four important dimensions: beauty, mostly illustrations versus mostly text, overview and structure. Category scales indicated the existence of two factors related to formal aspects and to appeal of the objects, respectively. The best predictor for the overall judgement of the category scales was beauty. Property vector fitting of the multidimensional solutions with the category scales further indicated the importance of beauty for the preference space. Aspects of usability, product design and aesthetics are discussed.
Three studies were conducted to ascertain how quickly people form an opinion about web page visual appeal. In the first study, participants twice rated the visual appeal of web homepages presented for 500 ms each. The second study replicated the first, but participants also rated each web page on seven specific design dimensions. Visual appeal was found to be closely related to most of these. Study 3 again replicated the 500 ms condition as well as adding a 50 ms condition using the same stimuli to determine whether the first impression may be interpreted as a 'mere exposure effect' (Zajonc 1980). Throughout, visual appeal ratings were highly correlated from one phase to the next as were the correlations between the 50 ms and 500 ms conditions. Thus, visual appeal can be assessed within 50 ms, suggesting that web designers have about 50 ms to make a good first impression.
This article examined the effects of product aesthetics on several outcome variables in usability tests. Employing a computer simulation of a mobile phone, 60 adolescents (14-17 yrs) were asked to complete a number of typical tasks of mobile phone users. Two functionally identical mobile phones were manipulated with regard to their visual appearance (highly appealing vs not appealing) to determine the influence of appearance on perceived usability, performance measures and perceived attractiveness. The results showed that participants using the highly appealing phone rated their appliance as being more usable than participants operating the unappealing model. Furthermore, the visual appearance of the phone had a positive effect on performance, leading to reduced task completion times for the attractive model. The study discusses the implications for the use of adolescents in ergonomic research.
We seek to advance visual theory in the domain of commercial rhetoric (advertising) by demonstrating how objects and symbols derive meaning from their histories. We do this by examining a single visual trope common in advertising, white space. The choice of white space was purposeful in that it is not a picture and its history is both accessible and traceable. Our sociohistorical theory is supported by showing how specific movements and social forces acted upon the meaning of this particular visual rhetorical device and how this meaning is today shared and understood by both producers of ads (ad agency creative directors) and the readers of ads (ordinary consumers). We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this approach to rhetorical and other major theoretical formulations. (c) 2006 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
We are exposed to various aesthetic experiences everyday. Important variables involved in aesthetics are preference and harmony. Preference for color schemes can be predicted by combining preferences for the basic colors and ratings of color harmony. We use FHSI color model, in which color channels distributions are expressed with fuzzy membership functions. Such phenomena, as preference and harmony, are usually approximate and thus categorizing and ordering them is a challenge. Using fuzzy linguistic variables and hedges, we offer a human-consistent classification of aesthetic judgements. The main output of the model is aesthetic judgement on a harmony and personal preference level, e.g. very high preference. For example, in the context of apparel coordination, it allows predicting a preference for a look based on clothing colors. According to experiments, the model results in useful predictions of ratings of aesthetic pleasantness. Aesthetic preference prediction has potential in a wide range of domains, including e-commerce, design, marketing, and art.
This study focuses on a better understanding of user preferences based on perceived usability and perceived aesthetics. For this, previous studies on the relationships among perceived usability, perceived aesthetics, user performance and user preference are reviewed with the consideration of occurrence of actual use, and their findings are summarised and analysed in terms of relationships of interest, variable measurements, experimental domains, participant types, usability/aesthetics manipulations, and performance measures. The study also considers possible reasons of conflicting findings for the relationship between perceived usability and perceived aesthetics after actual use. A conceptual model for user preferences is constructed to show the processes of users' preference-making before and during/after actual use and to emphasise mutual influences and feedback loops in user experience. Finally, several suggestions for future research are made to confirm or clarify existing findings by considering various influential factors. [Received: 09 October 2009; Accepted: 21 July 2010]
From the moment it was published almost ten years ago, The Elements of User Experience became a vital reference for Web and interaction designers the world over, and has come to define the core principles of the practice. Now, in this updated, and full-color new edition, Jesse James Garrett has refined his thinking about product design, going beyond the desktop to include insight that applies to the proliferation of mobile devices and applicationsSuccessful interactive product design requires more than just clean code and sharp graphics. You must also fulfill strategic objectives while meeting users' needs. Even the best content and the most sophisticated technology won't help you balance those goals without a cohesive, consistent user experience to support itWith so many issues involved---usability, brand identity, information architecture, interaction design---creating the user experience can be overwhelmingly complex. This new edition cuts through that complexity with clear explanations and vivid illustrations that focus on ideas rather than tools or techniques. Garrett gives readers the big picture of user experience development, from strategy and requirements to information architecture and visual design"Jesse James Garrett's book remains essential reading because it elegantly brings together the ideas that define user experience. This book continues to help novices design with confidence and to give experienced practitioners a structure that enables them to reach further." Giles Colborne author of Simple and Usable Web, Mobile and Interaction Design"Still, pound-for-pound, the most useful introduction to user experience there is." Louis Rosenfeld publisher, Rosenfeld Media and co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web"Jesse James Garrett clarifies the entire jumbled field of user experience design. And because he's a very smart fellow, he's kept it very short so there's a useful insight on almost every page." Steve Krug author of Don't Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy"Deconstructing and modeling both the human and conceptual issues, Garrett exposes the essence of a problem usually obscured by thick layers of technical camouflage." Alan Cooper author of About Face and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
The use of web is resolved by three different factors: the provided information, the usability of the website and the given impression to the user (Schenkman and Jonsson 2000). The latter factor has been the least researched and many of its potential effects are yet to be explored (Lavie and Tractinsky 2004). Usefulness and usability have been two of the fundamental qualities of the web experience and their impact has been tremendous on several fronts. Nevertheless, the need of exploring new and non-traditional factors, such as visual aesthetics and visual attractiveness, can be considered as imperative (Hartmann 2006). Positive feelings induced by aesthetics can impact how usable a product is (Schenkman and Jonsson 2000). Such pleasurable feelings have been found among several products (Jordan 1998), and these products were more usable than those that could not convey some visual attractiveness. A significant volume of research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has focused exclusively on usability. Aesthetics is arguably an equally significant factor as those already studied within the context of HCI, and its impact on usability has been underestimated. More recently, HCI research has attempted to keep a balance between usability and aesthetic considerations (Lavie and Tractinsky 2004). The result of that effort can be found in findings that clearly indicate a correlation between aesthetics and Usability (Tractinsky 1997]. Website users are most likely, either consciously or subconsciously, to remain at greater lengths of time in an attractive environment than in a less attractive one (Nakarada and Lobb 2005). That is partly due to positive feelings associated with the visually attractive stimuli. Symmetry can be such a stimulus and Sutcliffe's (2002) heuristics suggest that a highly structured layout along with information accessibility impacts the system's usability. Furthermore, perceived attractiveness has been shown to impact search perseverance (Nakarada and Lobb 2005). In other words, a user is mostly likely to keep searching when the environment, in which the search occurs, has a higher aesthetic level. Schenkman and Jonsson (2000) suggest that positive feelings generated by aesthetics can impact how usable a product is. They cite Jordan's (1998) findings for several products, which could engender pleasurable feelings. Those products were more usable than those that could not convey some visual attractiveness. Also, a high correlation exists between visual aesthetics and a system's perceived usability before, during and after the interaction (Tractinsky 1997). Lastly, simplicity, which is a key component of usability, could be the connection between aesthetics and usability because simplicity is considered an aesthetic notion as well (Karvonen 2000).
This paper experimentally investigates the role of visual complexity (VC) and prototypicality (PT) as design factors of websites, shaping users' first impressions by means of two studies. In the first study, 119 screenshots of real websites varying in VC (low vs. medium vs. high) and PT (low vs. high) were rated on perceived aesthetics. Screenshot presentation time was varied as a between-subject factor (50 ms vs. 500 ms vs. 1000 ms). Results reveal that VC and PT affect participants' aesthetics ratings within the first 50 ms of exposure. In the second study presentation times were shortened to 17, 33 and 50 ms. Results suggest that VC and PT affect aesthetic perception even within 17 ms, though the effect of PT is less pronounced than the one of VC. With increasing presentation time the effect of PT becomes as influential as the VC effect. This supports the reasoning of the information-processing stage model of aesthetic processing (Leder et al., 2004), where VC is processed at an earlier stage than PT. Overall, websites with low VC and high PT were perceived as highly appealing.
Aesthetics is an unsolved problem of information visualization, because there is no satisfactory understanding of what constitutes aesthetic effect. This survey paper gives an overview of approaches to model aesthetics, starting with Birkhoffpsilas aesthetic measure and continuing to recent ones based on mathematical and information theoretical concepts. Common concepts in the different models are highlighted, such as the effects of order and complexity. Further, practical techniques for generating aesthetic visualizations are shown together with examples of recent work in this field. Finally, the paper discusses some of the key issues regarding aesthetics and the human factor in the visualization process. Empirical studies have shown a correlation between perceived aesthetics and usability, meaning that a better understanding of aesthetics could improve the usability of visualizations.
Aesthetics is vital in affecting users' usage in Web interaction. In order to measure aesthetics, an application such as aesthetic measurement application (AMA) needs to be created. In the effort of doing so, this article describes the accuracy of our AMA in measuring the aesthetic aspect by comparing the results of our application and users' perceptions in measuring the aesthetics of the Web page interfaces. The Web pages used in our study were Mandarin learning Web pages that comprised of main pages, learning pages and exercise pages. For this research, the positions of objects, images element and texts element are defined as objects in a Web page interface. The objects of the Web pages were manipulated in order to produce the desired aesthetic values. The six aesthetics related elements used are balance, equilibrium, symmetry, sequence, rhythm, as well as order and complexity. The object modeling used as well as the process in developing this application were discussed in details. The steps on how to run our application were explained. This is to assist those who are interested may duplicate our study and improve the aesthetic measurement design in order to come up with a more ideal aesthetic measurement tool.
Visual complexity is an apparent feature in website design yet its effects on cognitive and emotional processing are not well understood. The current study examined website complexity within the framework of aesthetic theory and psychophysiological research on cognition and emotion. We hypothesized that increasing the complexity of websites would have a detrimental cognitive and emotional impact on users. In a passive viewing task (PVT) 36 website screenshots differing in their degree of complexity (operationalized by JPEG file size; correlation with complexity ratings in a preliminary study r=.80) were presented to 48 participants in randomized order. Additionally, a standardized visual search task (VST) assessing reaction times, and a one-week-delayed recognition task on these websites were conducted and participants rated all websites for arousal and valence. Psychophysiological responses were assessed during the PVT and VST. Visual complexity was related to increased experienced arousal, more negative valence appraisal, decreased heart rate, and increased facial muscle tension (musculus corrugator). Visual complexity resulted in increased reaction times in the VST and decreased recognition rates. Reaction times in the VST were related to increases in heart rate and electrodermal activity. These findings demonstrate that visual complexity of websites has multiple effects on human cognition and emotion, including experienced pleasure and arousal, facial expression, autonomic nervous system activation, task performance, and memory. It should thus be considered an important factor in website design.
An experiment was conducted to test the relationships between users' perceptions of a computerized system's beauty and usability.
The experiment used a computerized application as a surrogate for an Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Perceptions were elicited
before and after the participants used the system. Pre-experimental measures indicate strong correlations between system's
perceived aesthetics and perceived usability. Post-experimental measures indicated that the strong correlation remained intact.
A multivariate analysis of covariance revealed that the degree of system's aesthetics affected the post-use perceptions of
both aesthetics and usability, whereas the degree of actual usability had no such effect. The results resemble those found
by social psychologists regarding the effect of physical attractiveness on the valuation of other personality attributes.
The findings stress the importance of studying the aesthetic aspect of human–computer interaction (HCI) design and its relationships
to other design dimensions.
Extremely high correlations between repeated judgments of visual appeal of homepages shown for 50 milliseconds have been interpreted as evidence for a mere exposure effect [Lindgaard et al. 2006]. Continuing that work, the present research had two objectives. First, it investigated the relationship between judgments differing in cognitive demands. Second, it began to identify specific visual attributes that appear to contribute to different judgments. Three experiments are reported. All used the stimuli and viewing time as before. Using a paradigm known to disrupt processing beyond the stimulus offset, Experiment 1 was designed to ensure that the previous findings could not be attributed to such continued processing. Adopting a within-subject design, Experiment 2 investigated the extent to which judgments differing in cognitive demands (visual appeal, perceived usability, trustworthiness) may be driven by the visual characteristics of a Web page. It also enabled analyses of visual attributes that contributed most to the different judgments. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 but using a between-subject design to ensure that no practice effect could occur. The results suggest that all three types of judgments are largely driven by visual appeal, but that cognitively demanding judgments are processed in a qualitatively different manner than visual appeal, and that they rely on somewhat different visual attributes. A model accounting for the results is provided.
In this study, we propose that perceived website complexity (PWC) is central to understanding how sophisticated features of a website (such as animation, audio, video, and rollover effects) affect a visitor's experience at the site. Although previous research suggests that several elements of perceived complexity (e.g., amount of text, animation, graphics, range and consistency of webpages configuring a website, ease of navigating through it, and clarity of hyperlinks) affect important user outcomes, conflicting results yielded by previous research have created an important debate: Does complexity enhance or inhibit user experience at a website? In this study, we draw on the task complexity literature to develop a broad and holistic model that examines the antecedents and consequences of PWC. Our results provide two important insights into the relationship between PWC and user outcomes. First, the positive relationship between objective complexity and PWC was moderated by user familiarity. Second, online task goals (goal-directed search and experiential browsing) moderated the relationship between PWC and user satisfaction. Specifically, the relationship between PWC and user satisfaction was negative for goal-directed users and inverted-U for experiential users. The implications of this finding for the practice of website design are discussed.
Usability has been an essential component of the Web User Experience (UX) and a focal research topic. In recent years, the penetration of interactive technologies in all aspects of everyday life challenges the way UX is understood and designed. The past decade, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) scholars have been continuously attempting to introduce and explore new and non-traditional factors in the UX arena, such as aesthetics, emotions, affect, and trust. This study contributes to the field by exploring the relationship between aesthetics and UX; specifically the impact of the classical design element of white space on the perceived attractiveness and perceived usability of an e-commerce website. A between-subject research design involves the manipulation a website’s white space. Three different versions were constructed using 25, 50 and 75% of the white space, respectively. Findings offer support for the relationship between aesthetics and the perceived usability of a website. The study results suggest that the usability of a website is impacted negatively when white space increases over 50%. Practitioners should consider that in the context of eCommerce Web design, reduction of content and shrinking of visual elements, in favor of white space, is likely to negatively impact the usability of a website.
The influence of home page complexity on consumer attention, attitudes, and purchase intent
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Towards a universal understanding of color harmony: Fuzzy approach
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