This paper discusses the empirical findings concerning the visual aesthetic experience in a neurological context. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to shed light on the common ground across ...neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy to pave new roads for empirical research. Cognitive models posit that the brain employs neural networks mediating bottom-up and top- down processes, and in effect, engenders emotion and reward throughout the visual aesthetic experience. Likewise, empathy and its corresponding recruitment of bodily processes may facilitate the understanding of a visual artwork’s depicted emotion, which may allow the viewer to engage with the visual artwork from a psychological distance and, consequently, to experience pleasure regardless of the visual artwork’s emotional content. In conclusion, empathetic processes may be central to the visual aesthetic experience and should be considered by future empirical research investigating the visual aesthetic experience.
•This study links objective design factors with subjective aesthetics.•Each design factor affects the facets of subjective aesthetics in a different way.•Structural factors have a great impact on ...simplicity, diversity and craftsmanship.•Color factors have a great impact especially on colorfulness.
The present study examines how objective design factors of a website are linked to different facets of subjective aesthetic perception. Five online experiments based upon the screenshots of real-existing websites with a total of N=194 participants were conducted to isolate and analyze the effects of two objective structural factors (vertical symmetry, visual complexity) and three objective color factors (hue, saturation, brightness) on the different facets of subjective aesthetic perception (simplicity, diversity, colorfulness, craftsmanship) measured with the Visual Aesthetics of Website Inventory (Moshagen & Thielsch, 2010). Although all investigated factors are apparent features in website design, their effects on different facets of subjective aesthetic perception are not yet well understood. Our results show that websites of high symmetry, low complexity, blue hue, medium brightness or medium and high saturation received the highest overall aesthetics ratings. Furthermore, data reveal that structural factors compared to color factors have a manifold and greater impact on the different facets of subjective aesthetic perception than the color factors. Both structural factors have a great impact on simplicity, diversity and craftsmanship whereas the color factors have a great impact especially on colorfulness. Only complexity affects all facets of subjective aesthetic perception. The other objective design factors had effects on specific facets. Our findings shed light on the relationship between objective and subjective factors of aesthetic perception and may help designers to systematically target specific facets of visual aesthetics.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
To what extent do aesthetic experiences arise from the human ability to perceive and extract meaning from visual features? Ordinary scenes, such as a beach sunset, can elicit a sense of beauty in ...most observers. Although it appears that aesthetic responses can be shared among humans, little is known about the cognitive mechanisms that underlie this phenomenon. We developed a contour model of aesthetics that assigns values to visual properties in scenes, allowing us to predict aesthetic responses in adults from around the world. Through a series of experiments, we manipulate contours to increase or decrease aesthetic value while preserving scene semantic identity. Contour manipulations directly shift subjective aesthetic judgments. This provides the first experimental evidence for a causal relationship between contour properties and aesthetic valuation. Our findings support the notion that visual regularities underlie the human capacity to derive pleasure from visual information.
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Influence of visual aesthetics in product design, service environments and websites are well explored but increasing usage of mobile interfaces and the different use context demand investigation of ...influence of visual aesthetics of mobile app interfaces – ‘appscapes’ on mobile app adoption and m-loyalty. In this study, the conceptual model is developed by applying Kaplan's information processing model from environmental psychology and integrating it into the Technology Acceptance Model, thereby linking visual aesthetics of mobile apps to m-loyalty. The responses (n = 308) are collected using field experiments using four existing apps as stimuli. Results of PLS structural equation modelling reveal positive linkages between holistic visual aesthetic dimensions and outcomes of m-loyalty. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Does design, not technology, affect consumers' valuation of wearable devices? This study empirically examines the impact of the visual product aesthetics of wearables on consumers’ willingness-to-pay ...(WTP) premium, along with the relevant intervening consumer psychology of perceived benefits. The results of an online survey revealed a significant and positive association between the visual product aesthetics of wearables and WTP, perceived product quality (PQ), and perceived enjoyment (PE) of wearables. In addition, PE mediated the relation between visual aesthetics and WTP, while PQ did not. Meanwhile, consumer involvement moderated the relation between visual aesthetics and WTP. Implications and limitations were discussed.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
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Stylized Aesthetic QR Code Xu, Mingliang; Su, Hao; Li, Yafei ...
IEEE transactions on multimedia,
2019-Aug., 2019-8-00, Volume:
21, Issue:
8
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
With the continued proliferation of smart mobile devices, the Quick Response (QR) code has become one of the most-used types of two-dimensional code in the world. Aiming at beautifying the ...visual-unpleasant appearance of QR codes, existing works have developed a series of techniques. However, these works still leave much to be desired, such as personalization, artistry, and robustness. To address these issues, in this paper, we propose a novel type of aesthetic QR codes, Stylized aEsthEtic (SEE) QR code, and a three-stage approach to automatically produce such robust style-oriented codes. Specifically, in the first stage, we propose a method to generate an optimized baseline aesthetic QR code, which reduces the visual contrast between the noise-like black/white modules and the blended image. In the second stage, to obtain an art style QR code, we tailor an appropriate neural style transformation network to endow the baseline aesthetic QR code with artistic elements. In the third stage, we design a module-based robustness-optimization mechanism to ensure the performance robust by balancing two competing terms: visual quality and readability. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the SEE QR code has high quality in terms of both visual appearance and robustness and also offers a greater variety of personalized choices to users.
Visual aesthetics play a pivotal role in attracting and retaining customers in service environments. Building on theories of environmental psychology, this study introduces a novel and comprehensive ...aesthetic measure for evaluating servicescape design, which is called as the “visual aesthetic quotient” (VAQ). This measure is presented as the ratio of the dimensions of order and complexity in servicescape's visual design, and it aims to provide an objective and holistic approach of servicescape design evaluation. In addition, we introduce and validate a pioneering method for quantifying order and complexity objectively using algorithmic models applied to servicescape images. We investigated and established the influence of the VAQ on the perceived attractiveness of servicescapes, developing its role further in this context. The entire approach was comprehensively and rigorously examined using four studies (social media analytics, eye-tracking, a field experiment, and an experimental design), contributing to conceptual advancement and empirical testing. This study provides a novel, computational, objective, and holistic aesthetic measure for effective servicescape design management by validating computational aesthetic measures and establishing their role in influencing servicescape attractiveness; testing the mediation of processing fluency and pleasure; and examining the moderating effects of service context.
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Landscape color provides visual attractiveness and is an important landscape architecture construct in design and with aesthetics. Along roadways, plant color in a midground position provides a ...potential location readily seen by people. However, few studies have quantitatively explored the impact of a green (original) only compared to additions of color on the visual aesthetic quality (VAQ) in this spatial location. In this study, visual images were constructed to contrast four red color proportions (25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of midground) and four color spatial distributions (Red-Single, Red-Group, Green-Single and Green-Group) mixed with three landscapes texture classes (rigid = narrowleaf coniferous, soft = broadleaved, and mixed = both) in the background. As red color proportion increased, VAQ also increased. In the original all green landscape, the background setting had a significant impact on VAQ, but the texture plant design of the foreground had no significant impact on the landscape VAQ. Broadleaved (MVAQ = 63.2) and coniferous landscapes (MVAQ = 55.9) were rated as more attractive than a mixed landscape (MVAQ = 27.9). From the perspective of design color, increasing the proportions of color can improve the VAQ of the landscape. This study indicates that aesthetic quality becomes highest when the color proportion of the middle ground layer was greatest at C100 (MVAQ = 79.7). Comparing the four spatial color distributions, the single distributed green landscape (MVAQ = 60.9) and the group distributed landscape when started with red (MVAQ = 54.0) had the higher quality than the others. Findings from this study can be used to support public authorities and urban planners to effectively design and manage urban spaces to meet dwellers’ needs.
Visual aesthetic evaluations, which impact decision-making and well-being, recruit the ventral visual pathway, subcortical reward circuitry, and parts of the medial prefrontal cortex overlapping with ...the default-mode network (DMN). However, it is unknown whether these networks represent aesthetic appeal in a domain-general fashion, independent of domain-specific representations of stimulus content (artworks versus architecture or natural landscapes). Using a classification approach, we tested whether the DMN or ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOT) contains a domain-general representation of aesthetic appeal. Classifiers were trained on multivoxel functional MRI response patterns collected while observers made aesthetic judgments about images from one aesthetic domain. Classifier performance (high vs. low aesthetic appeal) was then tested on response patterns from held-out trials from the same domain to derive a measure of domain-specific coding, or from a different domain to derive a measure of domain-general coding. Activity patterns in category-selective VOT contained a degree of domain-specific information about aesthetic appeal, but did not generalize across domains. Activity patterns from the DMN, however, were predictive of aesthetic appeal across domains. Importantly, the ability to predict aesthetic appeal varied systematically; predictions were better for observers who gave more extreme ratings to images subsequently labeled as “high” or “low.” These findings support a model of aesthetic appreciation whereby domain-specific representations of the content of visual experiences in VOT feed in to a “core” domain-general representation of visual aesthetic appeal in the DMN. Whole-brain “searchlight” analyses identified additional prefrontal regions containing information relevant for appreciation of cultural artifacts (artwork and architecture) but not landscapes.
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The visual revolution and attention economy of the digital world have put visual aesthetic communication into the primary position of social media marketing. However, this phenomenon remains ...underexplored within social commerce research. This study thus develops a visual information adoption unimodel (VIAUM), to explore the relationship between visual aesthetics and social commerce intentions. Users with social commerce experience are invited to complete our online survey, and 321 valid data are collected. The results reveal that visual aesthetics has direct and indirect (
perceived usefulness) effects on the social commerce intention of users. Besides, interdependent self-construal (InterSC) strengthens the direct effect between visual aesthetics and social commerce intention. In contrast, independent self-construal weakens the mediation effects of perceived usefulness. This study is among the first attempts to empirically examine the intervening mechanism and boundary conditions between the visual aesthetics of self-presentation of micro-celebrity and the social commerce intention of consumers.
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