Your reputation precedes you: the influence of expectations on usability and visual appeal in a web environment

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the impact of expectation on the perceived and objective usability and visual appeal of a website. The problem is that many studies have been done on the relationship between usability and visual appeal but the results of these studies vary vastly. There are many factors that influence the results, including website domain, the type of task, if incentive is given, and metrics used to get the usability and visual appeal measures. However, no one has examined the impact of expectations on these two variables. A set of five preliminary studies was completed in order to get a website data set that significantly varied in levels of visual appeal and usability. This resulted in four website versions: (1) easy and pretty, (2) easy and ugly, (3) hard and pretty, and (4) hard and ugly. Five levels of expectations were implemented: (a) easy and pretty, (b) easy and ugly (c) hard and pretty (d) hard and ugly, and (e) the control - no expectations. Three main computer laboratory studies (in the form of user-based usability tests) were completed to determine the effect of textual and verbal expectations on visual appeal and usability.