The more appealing the graphics on gadgets, the better you do the task on hand

A new study has found that eye pleasing gadget graphics enhance our performance.

According to British researchers Irene Reppa of Swansea University and Sine McDougall of Bournemouth University, an appealing graphic on a mobile phone or website helps people perform tasks quicker and more easily as the job gets more demanding. Investing a little bit extra to design aesthetically pleasing visuals for electronic devices, websites or anything people need to interact with will be beneficial in the long run.

The researchers used computer icons in the study because these visuals are well-defined stimuli and part of modern life. In a search-and-localization task, participants first memorized a target icon and then searched for it among an array of nine icons. This assignment was designed to reflect the kind of task people perform when interacting with modern electronics. This includes finding and selecting icons representing tasks to be carried out from among a number of distracting symbols.

The researchers concluded that appealing icons are not only pleasant to use, but also speed up people's ability to solve multi-step problems with visuals when using websites or mobile phones. Pleasing aesthetics prove to be most important under taxing conditions, such as when users deal with complex, abstract or unfamiliar material.

Reppa said that savings of even a few milliseconds at a time all add up when one was performing multi-step interactions on a website or a mobile phone, and this might make people avoid some interfaces, such as certain websites or phones, in favour of those that maximise efficient performance.

The researchers advised that investing in designing visuals with the most widespread appeal as possible. Doing so would not only enhance the user experience but it will allow people who use mobiles and websites to be more efficient, yielding benefits for the industries creating the applications and interfaces.

The results are published in Springer's journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review.