This document discusses aesthetic preferences in design from multiple perspectives. It examines aesthetics at the perceptual level, looking at principles of unity and variety. It also analyzes aesthetics at the cognitive level, exploring how people prefer designs that balance typicality with novelty. Finally, it considers aesthetics at the social level, noting people value designs that combine connectedness and uniqueness. The document draws on research from psychology and evolution theory to understand why humans have certain aesthetic preferences and what functions those preferences may have served evolutionarily.

1. 1
Aesthetic
Preferences
Design Aesthetics-week 6.1
Meng Li (李萌)

2. 2
Aesthetic in Design Processes
Form
Sensing
Judgem
ent
Form
imaginati
on
ideation
FormSensing
Discovering Developing
Defining
Delivering
Double Diamond Model, Design Council 2019, https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-
framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond

3. 3
Values
Taste
Values
Aesthetic: Perception to Emotion
Morality
Smell
See
Hear
Touch
Perception
Cognition
Emotion

4. 4
Aesthetic Preferences
and Design:
a battle of impulses
Paul Hekkert, 2014
Hekkert, P. (2014). Aesthetic responses todesign: A battle of impulses. In P. Tinio & J. Smith (Eds.),
The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts (Cambridge Handbooks in
Psychology, pp. 277-299). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5. 5
The beauty dilemma
• “Physically attractive people are assumed
to possess more desirable personality
traits and expected to be more successful
than less attractive people” (Dion,
Berscheid and Walster, 1972)
• “What-is-beautiful-is-good” principle also
holds for designed artefacts?

6. 6
On aesthetic responses
• Aesthesis, “an understanding through sensory perception”
• Gratification that comes from sensory perception
• No direct implications for any of our everyday concerns
• Dispositional states fundamental to our emotion
• “Disinterested” (Kant, 1952) or distanced (Bullough, 1912)
• People have a concern for experiencing aesthetic
pleasure and will therefore seek stimuli that provide such
pleasure (Desmet and Hekkert, 2007).
• Sensorial sensation: most people experience strong
emotional reactions when they listen to their favorite music
(Blood and Zatorre, 2001)

7. 7
The function of aesthetic: “Attractive
things work better”
• Visual aesthetics positively affects perceived usability (Hassenzahl,
2004; Tractinsky, Katz and Ikar, 2000)
• More aesthetically pleasing websites are considered better and therefore
more usable (Hassenzahl and Monk, 2010; Van Schaik, Hassenzahl and
Ling, 2012)
• Enhancing task performance (i.e., speeding up task completion;
Moshagen, Musch and Göritz, 2009;Sonderegger and Sauer, 2009)
• Customer loyalty (Chang and Chen, 2009; see Moshagen and Thielsch,
2010 and Tractinsky, 2012 for overviews of aesthetic studies in HCI).
• Positive affect broadens cognition and attention (e.g., Isen, 2002; Rowe,
Hirsh and Anderson, 2006), and increases motivation (e.g., Forgas,
2000).

8. 8
The function of aesthetic: Why do
we like what we like?
• Lindgaard and colleagues (2006) demonstrated that the visual appeal of
a website can be reliably assessed in 50 ms or less.
• “Feelings are adaptations for guiding human motivation and behavior,
and arise from ancestral cue processing by the mind. For the most part,
humans are not designed to consciously comprehend the ancestral cues.
• On all human-made artifacts: buildings, art, products or various forms of
entertainment.
• Only the scientific method can identify the cues involved in aesthetic
judgment and the evolutionary function of the judgment.” (Thornhill,
2003, p. 22)
• Aesthetics on Non human-made objects: brain mechanism selected
through human evolution (Symonds, 1995).

9. 9
The function of aesthetic: A battle of
impulses
• Two evolutionary pressures(motivation and
development theories):
– On the one hand, humans seek that which is safe
to approach, offers security and makes little
demand on their limited processing capacity.
– On the other hand, humans are motivated to take
risks, engage in exploratory behavior, extend their
capabilities and promote their learning. (e.g.,
Bowlby, 1969; Gray, 1987; Higgins, 1997)
扩展阅读：（荷）布斯克斯，进化思维——达尔文对我们世界观的影响，四川人
民出版社，2010.

10. 10
Model of Aesthetic Preference
What makes a product good listen to, pleasant to touch or use and nice to smell (or even taste)?

11. 11
The perception level: unity-in-variety
Principle of closure applied to the design of a billboard (design by Fabrique). Note that the black
dividing seam is unnecessarily large, but this is perceptually “acceptable” because of closure.
• Sensory-motor
understanding
• Like to perceive unity,
attracted to diversity,
complexity and
variety(Berlyne, 1966, 1971)

12. 12
• Underlying perceptual organization represent our “best
guess” to order an incoming stream of information
“Gestalt principles”

13. 13Domus winery by Herzog and de Meuron, 1997
Maximum effect for minimum means

14. 14
Rem Koolhaas

15. 15
The cognitive level: Typicality in novelty
• “MAYA principle: people like things that
are Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.”
Social robots: design for acceptability

16. 16
Aesthetic association to “Typicality”

17. 17
Aesthetic association to “Novelty”

18. 18
The social level:
connectedness in uniqueness
• Interaction and intention
Altruistic garbage bag (designed by Simon Akkaya)

19. 19Greetings from Delft
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