Until recently the guiding tenet in human-computer interaction was that any interface must be easy to learn and use. However, it has been increasingly recognized that the appeal of the interface to the user and their enjoyment of it is also important. The aim of the current study was to examine the nature of the relationships between icon characteristics, user performance, and aesthetic appeal. When participants were asked to rate the appeal of a corpus of icons, it was found that the same icon characteristics predicted appeal as those predicting user performance. The theoretical and practical implications of the remarkable similarity in the factors determining appeal and usability are discussed.
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