An icon that everyone wants to click on : an empirical study on the relationship between consumer perceptions and mobile game icon successfulness

Mobile games market has been touted as the fastest growing gaming sector in the world. Every day thousands of new mobile games are published to join millions of others on app stores. The competition for top grossing mobile games is fierce, and the way a game is represented greatly contributes to its commercial success. When browsing for mobile games, consumers search for an icon they want to click on. However, most mobile games fail to engage consumers who browse past hundreds of icons on app stores daily. This leads us to the following questions: how do consumers perceive mobile game icons and what are the aesthetic qualities that make an icon successful in the sense that it incites consumers to click? This thesis investigates the relationship between consumer perceptions of mobile game icons and icon successfulness (i.e. consumer overall evaluation of the icon and their willingness to click the icon as well as download and purchase the mobile game). An online survey was constructed for respondents (respondent n = 569) to evaluate 4 randomized icons each from a total set of 68 mobile game icons with a classification of four dominant icon attributes: abstract, concrete, character and text. The evaluation was done by using semantic differential scales of 22 adjective pairs leading into a total of 2276 icon evaluations that form the data of the study (icon evaluation n = 2276). The results indicate that consumers are more likely to give a higher grade to icons and click them as well as download and purchase the mobile game that the icon belongs to, when the icons are perceived beautiful, good, unique, professional, expensive, soft, exciting, strong, relaxed, realistic and quiet. Additionally, adjectives masculine, young, active, colorful, three-dimensional, happy and simple predict a higher grade; adjectives active, two-dimensional, colorless, masculine, happy and young predict clicking; adjectives active, happy, simple and young predict downloading and; adjectives sad, colorless and fast predict purchasing. Furthermore, the study investigated the factorial structure of perceptions towards icons, or in other words, which adjectives are likely to occur together in user evaluation for any given icon. The results show that the following factors can be identified: value, potency, activity, integrity and complexity. This study was one of the first attempts to understand consumer perceptions of mobile game icon successfulness. The results may be helpful for future research as well as to game companies when designing mobile game icons for app stores

An icon that everyone wants to click: How perceived aesthetic qualities predict app icon successfulness

Mobile app markets have been touted as fastest growing marketplaces in the world. Every day thousands of apps are published to join millions of others on app stores. The competition for top grossing apps and market visibility is fierce. The way an app is visually represented can greatly contribute to the amount of attention an icon receives and to its consequent commercial performance. Therefore, the icon of the app is of crucial importance as it is the first point of contact with the potential user/customer amidst the flood of information. Those apps that fail to arouse attention through their icons danger their commercial performance in the market where consumers browse past hundreds of icons daily. Using semantic differential scale (22 adjective pairs), we investigate the relationship between consumer perceptions of app icons and icon successfulness, measured by 1) overall evaluation of the icon, 2) willingness to click the icon, 3) willingness to download the imagined app and, 4) willingness to purchase the app. The study design was a vignette study with random participant (n = 569) assignment to evaluate 4 icons (n = 2276) from a total of pre-selected 68 game app icons across 4 categories (concrete, abstract, character and text). Results show that consumers are more likely to interact with app icons that are aesthetically pleasing and convey good quality. Particularly, app icons that are perceived unique, realistic and stimulating lead to more clicks, downloads and purchases.</p

Attractive User Interface Elements : Measurement and prediction

The years 2020–2021 mark a time when the global population was encountered by a world-wide pandemic. The lockdown had devastating consequences on many industries and individuals, and the emergence of global economies into the postpandemic recovery has only just begun. However, as people adapted to the pandemic by embracing a mobile lifestyle, industries that employed graphical user interfaces as a means of human-computer interaction saw tremendous growth, exceeding everyone’s expectations despite predictions of a slowdown. One example is the mobile apps and games markets, touted as the fastest growing marketplaces worldwide. At the moment, the impact of the mobile economy is undeniably high, and it does not show signs of stalling. As we look ahead and start the 'return to physical', we can see new mobile habits take shape in our everyday life. Today, people conduct most daily functions via graphical user interfaces, due to the increasing technology-mediated nature of all human praxis, such as socializing, work, education, and entertainment. The interaction is realized on various different platforms, be they on desktop, mobile devices, VR or (smart) TVs. Although user interfaces themselves are not novel, their role is more significant now than anyone could have imagined only a few decades ago. Attractive visual designs in user interfaces have proven to enhance many aspects concerning usability, sense of pleasure and trust, but evaluating aesthetics is challenging due to the subjective nature of user perception. Although several theories and measurement instruments have been developed in order to assess and design pleasing user interfaces, the measures remain scattered. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation is to expand knowledge on how the visual aesthetics of graphical user interfaces can be modelled, evaluated, and assessed. Through four studies, this dissertation provides an overview of the state-of-theart in the literature of measurement instruments of visual aesthetics for graphical user interfaces. The dimensions of aesthetic perception that emerge in the context of user interface elements are also examined and introduced by developing a scale for measuring perceptions. As engaging and intuitive imagery has become one of the most valuable assets in today’s attention economy, the studies also observe individual user perceptions of different demographic groups and their relationships on aesthetic qualities to determine how they predict the success of graphical elements. The publications employ methodology ranging from a systematic literature review to sophisticated, quantitative statistical modelling methods to accurately identify and address each of the described phenomena by standardized means. The findings provided by this dissertation greatly contribute to existing literature on the measurement and prediction of visually pleasing graphical user interfaces both practically and theoretically. Advancing knowledge and guidelines in this fast-paced field requires assessment from a wide perspective, including the observation of prior work, and the adaptation of measures to the modern economy by highlighting user behavior and preferences. This is particularly important in the milieu of the increasingly growing prevalence of graphical user interfaces that will continue shaping our lives in ways unimaginable

User judgements of the online world: factors influencing website appeal and user decision-making.

Websites are an integral part of everyday life but we rarely think about how their visual appeal shapes our responses to them. To understand this relationship, research has outlined a number of visual characteristics that may determine appeal. However, previous studies have often used small stimulus sets or made experimental assumptions about critical website characteristics without careful control, making findings difficult to interpret and generalise. Experiment 1 addressed this through creating a corpus of 480 website stimuli containing normative ratings of key characteristics responsible for website appeal. Subsequent studies employed this corpus, providing stimuli that were well controlled but still represented the wider domain. Experiment 2 examined the timescale of appeal judgements and the impact of verbal brand framing messages on these judgements. As expected, participants made rapid, reliable, judgements even when given only 500ms. However, exposure to positive brand framing had a negative effect on appeal ratings. A possible explanation is discussed in terms of brand placement prominence on consumer attitudes. In Experiment 3 participants evaluated the appeal of embedded website advertising in order to examine the impact of visual framing on appeal judgements. Advertisements were deemed more appealing when they appeared on appealing websites, although brand familiarity had a mediating role. Eye movements revealed a complex relationship between website and advertisement appeal and familiarity in determining where participants attended. In Experiment 4, website appeal judgements were compared between typical participants and participants with autism in order to examine the role of individual differences. Interestingly, despite careful manipulations few differences emerged. However, eye tracking data revealed ASD participants attended to detailed content more than their typical counterparts. The implications of this work are discussed and a revision to the model of aesthetic judgement (Leder et al., 2004) is proposed in order to account for the current findings. An information-processing model of website evaluations is presented which outlines the processes involved from making initial judgements of appeal through to later, long-term evaluations of a website