What Drives Perceived Usability in Mobile Web Design: Classical or Expressive Aesthetics?

Research has shown that the perceived usability of a web artifact is influenced by its perceived aesthetics: a high-order construct composed of two lower-order dimensions (classical aesthetics and expressive aesthetics). However, in the mobile domain, where usability is very important in human-computer interaction (HCI) given the relatively small screen size of the mobile device, limited research has investigated: (1) which of the two dimensions of visual aesthetics is the stronger predictor of the perceived usability of a website; (2) how the classical dimension impacts the expressive dimension; and (3) how culture moderates the relationships among the three HCI design constructs. To address these questions, we conducted a study of the perceptions of four systematically manipulated mobile websites and modeled the relationships between perceived usability and the two dimensions of perceived aesthetics. Based on a sample of 233 participants (87 Canadians and 146 Nigerians), our models account for 30% to 80% of the variance of perceived usability. They show that classical aesthetics is stronger than expressive aesthetics in predicting the perceived usability of a mobile website, irrespective of the level of aesthetic treatment of the user interface and culture, with the effect size being larger for the Nigerian group than for the Canadian group. Moreover, the models reveal that classical aesthetics strongly influences expressive aesthetics. Our results suggest that what is classical is expressively beautiful and usable. The significance of our findings is that in mobile web, there is need for designers to pay closer attention to classical aesthetics given the strong influence it has on perceived usability.