The "Beauty Dilemma": Beauty is Valued but Discountedin Product Choice

CHI 2009 ~ The Beauty Dilemma

April 8th, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA

The "Beauty Dilemma": Beauty is Valued but Discounted in Product Choice Sarah Diefenbach Department of Psychology University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany diefenbach@uni-landau.de

Marc Hassenzahl Design, Folkwang University, Essen, Germany Media City, Åbo Akademi University, Finland marc.hassenzahl@folkwang-hochschule.de

ABSTRACT

The empirical study of aesthetics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is concerned with – among other topics – the relationship between beauty and usability and the general impact of beauty on product choice and use.

Specifically, the present paper explores the notion of a "beauty dilemma" – the idea that people discount beauty in a choice situation, although they value it in general (i.e., they are not choosing what makes them happy). We explored this idea in three studies with a total of over 600 participants. Study 1 revealed a reluctance to pay for beauty due to its hedonic nature (i.e., associated with luxury etc.).

Study 2 showed that people prefer a more beautiful product, but justify their choice by referring to spurious advantages in usability. Finally, Study 3 revealed that a choice situation which requires a trade-off between beauty and usability, and which offers no further way to justify choosing beauty, leads to a sharp increase in the preference of usability. The underlying reasons for this "beauty dilemma" and further implications are discussed.

Author Keywords

User Experience, aesthetics, beauty, product choice, beauty dilemma.

ACM Classification Keywords

H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

INTRODUCTION

Aesthetics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a recent but rapidly growing field. Triggered by early studies on the relationship between beauty and usability [e.g., 19] and taken up by attempts to more fundamentally rethink the scope of HCI [e.g., 12], aesthetics has already become an integral topic of HCI. One strand of research on aesthetics focuses on judgments of visual beauty and explores their impact on the adoption Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.

CHI 2009, April 4–9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA. Copyright 2009 ACM 978-1-60558-246-7/09/04...$5.00.

and use of interactive products [20, 5]. In this context, Hassenzahl [5, p. 291] defined a judgment of beauty as "a predominantly affect-driven evaluative response to the visual Gestalt of an object." Thus, based on a product's visual appearance, people may judge it to be beautiful (or not) and will accordingly attach beauty (or the lack of it) as an attribute to the product.

These attributions are remarkably fast and stable [11, 18].

Unlike other attributes, such as judgments about a product's usability, beauty requires limited experience with the product itself. Beauty is perceived immediately – it takes effect on product perception and evaluation right from the first glimpse.

In general, it seems out of question that beauty is important and adds to a product's value. As Raymond Loewy, influential designer of the last century, put it "between two products equal in price, function and quality, the one with the most attractive exterior will win." "Beauty sells" appears to be a universal truism [e.g., 1].

The present paper will challenge this view. Its general message is that although people value beauty, they may fail to fully take it into account when choosing a product. In other words, they may choose against their own later preferences. We will first summarize current research on choice and decision making to describe the underlying reasons for this "beauty dilemma". Second, we present three empirical studies focusing on the potential tension between beauty and usability supporting our notion. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for HCI and design.

REASONS FOR THE BEAUTY DILEMMA

One important source of the "beauty dilemma" is what Hsee and colleagues call "lay rationalism" [8]. People want to choose rationally. Due to this, they tend to attach greater importance to product attributes, which are "hard" (i.e., unambiguous, or even expressed in numbers), or related to the core function of a product. "Soft" or peripheral attributes are less considered. However, these attributes can nevertheless be important for the later overall product experience. Hsee and colleagues [8], for example, showed that people tend to focus on the picture quality of a TV set while choosing, although they are well aware of the fact that the later TV experience needs a good balance between picture and sound quality. By "lay rationalism", people may

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end up with a suboptimal choice, precisely because they wish to be sober and rational.

Beauty in interactive products possesses all the characteristics of a peripheral and ambiguous attribute.

Unlike jewelry or clothes, interactive products are primarily perceived as "tools". They can be easily reduced to a core function, such as "making a telephone call," "taking a picture" or "listening to music." By that, beauty will be always thought of as only peripheral; a mere extra to a product's core function. In addition, beauty appears hard to grasp and quantify, which is typical for "soft" attributes.

Hsee [8] showed that an attribute expressed in numbers receives more weight in a choice situation – independent of its actual content.

The peripheral and ambiguous nature of beauty in interactive products creates an air of "irrationality”. As long as people experience an urge to display a certain "rationalism" and soberness, beauty might not be the most straightforward argument for a choice. In addition, people may even be afraid of being overwhelmed by their spontaneous preferences triggered by beauty. The consequence is an active discounting of beauty in choice.

Admittedly, neglecting peripheral and ambiguous attributes can be a valid choice heuristic: given the choice between a pain killer which tastes sweet and a more efficient pain killer which tastes bitter, it is just reasonable to focus on pain reduction, but not on the more experiential and peripheral attribute "taste". However, interactive products are more complex than pain killers and a "good" experience may depend on more than just the proper fulfillment of a core function, such as "making a telephone call".

Specifically beauty may be important for the later experience because of its "social meaning", its role in building an emotional attachment to the product and it may even have impact on the task accomplishment itself [see 5, 20 for an overview].

The psychological reason for discounting peripheral and ambiguous attributes may be a general difficulty to justify a choice based on these attributes. From consumer research it is known that hedonic consumption – which includes choosing and using products because of their beauty or other hedonic attributes – is associated with luxury, guilt and waste [e.g., 9, 10, 17]. Consequently, people show specific behavioral tendencies in conjunction with hedonic consumption, which are assumed to apply to beauty as well.

These are a preference to pay for hedonic goods with time rather than money [14], a stronger focus on pragmatic, functional attributes in a public compared to a private context [2] and a tendency to prefer hedonic products as prizes rather than purchases [13].

Justification may play a role in the context of interactive products as well. For example, Tractinsky and Zmiri [21] analyzed the preference for mp3-players and identified differences in "beauty/design" as crucial for choice.

However, when asked about their personal choice criteria,

participants emphasized the pragmatic aspects. Diefenbach and Hassenzahl [3] showed that participants prefer a predominantly beautiful to a predominantly usable mobile phone, but only when they are given an easy opportunity to justify their choice. In an unpublished follow up-study, Diefenbach again asked people to choose among different mobile phones, which were either predominantly beautiful or predominantly usable. Participants also specified to what extent they considered justification of their choice, how difficult it was to reach a decision and finally their affective state after having made their choice. In this study, participants with a higher need for justification rather chose the usable over the beautiful phone. Choosing beauty in turn was associated with an increased choice difficulty but also with more positive post-choice affect. In other words, driven by the need for justification, people may choose the product with less positive affective impact.

To summarize: although we do value beauty, and although it may positively contribute to our overall experience of a product, it is likely to be discounted in product choice. This is due to its peripheral, ambiguous and soft nature, which makes it hard to justify.

THE STUDIES

The following three studies have the common theme of demonstrating the impact of beauty on the outcome of choice and the choice process itself (e.g., choice difficulty).

Approaching an attribute’s impact in real-life choices by assessing preferences for an assortment of products with contradictory specifications on certain attributes is a commonly used method in marketing research, for example, this is the basic idea of the various techniques based on conjoint analysis [see 4 for an overview]. In order to explore our assumption of a “beauty dilemma” we contrast the peripheral attribute "beauty" with the more central attribute "usability."

In our studies, beauty and usability are presented as attributes of a product. Note that this does not imply that beauty or usability is an actual feature of the object. An attribute is the consequence of an attribution process, which relates an experience of beauty to a particular object and establishes it as the cause of this experience. This is akin to affect attribution [e.g., 15], where felt arousal and negative valence is, for example, attributed to a bear ("I'm afraid of the bear"), which will in turn become an attribute of the object itself ("The bear is frightening", which actually means "the bear is able to cause fear").

A central challenge of our studies is to ensure that people agree on differences in beauty of the objects we study. To achieve this, we used two different strategies, both common in psychology and consumer research. One strategy was to provide external attribute values (Study 1), that is, in our case, to set a product’s beauty to a particular value, e.g., "beautiful," "ugly". The other strategy was to use objects, which are pre-tested to differ in beauty, and to rely on a

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similar judgment and attribution in the actual experiment (Study 2 and 3).

much harder to justify, because beauty does not directly contribute to the primary function of a mobile phone.

In general, the three studies used different approaches. This is to explore the robustness of the underlying theme, the "beauty dilemma". Converging findings from different approaches will add to the credibility and robustness of the underlying idea.

Accordingly, we expected that:

Study 1: Is beauty worth paying for?

In our first study, participants were required to choose between two different mobile phones. In general, one mobile phone offered a higher value on a given attribute, but was also more expensive than the other (by 50%). The attributes were either usability or beauty. In other words, half of the participants were asked to choose between a more usable but more expensive and a neutral but cheaper phone. The other half was asked to choose between a more beautiful but more expensive and a neutral but cheaper phone. The mobile phones were only described; no pictures were provided. Usability and beauty were introduced as attributes and those attributes’ values were given as relative descriptors ("more beautiful," "more usable"). Prices were provided in Euro. One may argue, that buying a product without even having seen it, is a setting too artificial.

However, keep in mind that the purpose of this first study was not to simulate a real purchase, but to test the idea that people are more reluctant to spend money on beauty compared to usability. For this, we needed to make sure that the higher selling price of the "better" phone is perceived as being solely due to a difference in a particular attribute value. This can be most unambiguously achieved by using explicit, textual descriptors, such as "more usable".

In addition to the between-subjects variable of attribute (usability, beauty), we also varied the general price level (low, high) as a between-subjects variable to control potential effects (see Table 1 for an overview of the resulting four choice situations). attribute price level low

usability neutral, 40€ more usable, 60€

beauty neutral, 40€ more beautiful, 60€

high

neutral, 100€ more usable, 150€

neutral, 100€ more beautiful, 150€

Table 1: Four different choice situations (between-subjects) (Study 1)

The choice situation allows for a direct test of the "beauty dilemma". In general, we assume a preference for the "better" phone (i.e., more beautiful, more usable), given that the price difference is not too big. However, whether this holds true, may depend on whether the respective attribute is regarded as central or peripheral. As long as usability is a central attribute, closely linked to the primary function of a mobile phone, the extra expense on an increase in usability is easy to justify. Improvements in beauty, however, will be

• H1: The more usable (and more expensive) mobile phone will be chosen more frequently than the more beautiful (and more expensive) phone In addition to the choice rates, which we expected to reflect a "norm" that usability is worth paying for, but beauty is not, we also studied the perceived difficulty of choice. In general, choosing against a norm induces conflict, which will result in an increase in experienced choice difficulty. In the present study, we thus expected that: • H2a: Given the attribute is beauty, the choice will be rated as more difficult by participants, who finally chose the more beautiful (and more expensive) phone compared to those who chose the neutral (less expensive) one • H2b: Given the attribute is usability, the choice will be rated as less difficult by participants, who finally chose the more usable (more expensive) phone compared to those who chose the neutral (less expensive) one To test H2a and b we used the actual choice (neutral and less expensive, better and more expensive) as a third variable to test for the assumed interaction of actual choice and attribute on choice difficulty.

In sum, we used a 2x2 between-subjects experimental design with attribute (beauty, usability) and price level (low, high) as independent variables and choice and perceived choice difficulty as dependent variables. For testing H2a and b, we additionally used actual choice (neutral/less expensive, better/more expensive) as a quasiexperimental, between-subjects variable.

The study was conducted as an online survey (in German).

Participants (N=422, 261 female, mean age=38 years, min=16, max=70) were randomly assigned to the four conditions. The introductory part of the survey presented the following scenario: "Imagine you need a new mobile phone. You already planned to spend all of your recent, unexpected monetary birthday present." Participants in the low price level condition got a present of 100€, participants in the high price level condition got 250€. We introduced the birthday present to create a "windfall", i.e., some extra, unexpected money, to avoid reasoning about whether one can afford the expense or not. Note, that the “birthday money” always exceeded the price of the mobile phone, which is assumed to create a general feeling of having "saved" some money, even if one chooses the more expensive alternative.

Participants were then asked to choose one of the two alternatives and to rate their experienced difficulty "to come up with a choice" (on a five-point-scale from 1=very low to 5=very high).

As expected (H1), choice rates differed significantly depending on whether the attribute was beauty or usability

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(chi-square test of association, χ2=24.4; df=1; p<.001): choosing the better phone was much more likely when the attribute was usability compared to beauty (choosing the "better" phone: usability: 79%; beauty: 56%). Choice rates were not affected by the price level.

differences in underlying norms. Whereas not spending money on usability is experienced as more problematic than spending money, spending money on beauty is experienced as more problematic than not spending money.

An analysis of variance with choice difficulty as dependent variable, and the attribute (usability, beauty), price level (low, high) and the actual choice (neutral and less expensive, better and more expensive) as independent variables revealed the expected significant attribute x choice interaction effect, F(1, 412)=7.6; p<.01, see Figure 1.

Study 1 tested the impact of usability and beauty in isolation. It clearly showed that people more readily invest in usability compared to beauty. However, the "beauty dilemma" assumes that people actually like beauty – they merely have difficulties to justify an according choice. This problem could be avoided, if a product offers some pragmatic benefits on top of beauty. Even if those benefits are only minor, they could nevertheless be used to justify a choice originally based on beauty rather than usability.

35

Actual choice

In Study 2, beauty was thus offered for free. Participants were asked to choose between two mobile phones, one pretested to be more beautiful (Figure 2, B) than the other (A).

However, each phone had also a (minor) usability problem.

Given that both alternatives have their respective usability problem, but one product is more beautiful than the other, it is just reasonable to choose the more beautiful one. In the present study, we were especially interested in the reasons people give for their choice: Will they readily affirm that they made their choice based on beauty, because both alternatives had a comparable, minor usability problem?

Considering the assumed difficulty to justify beauty, we expected that a considerable proportion among those who chose the beautiful phone would nevertheless refer to usability (i.e., the fact that they want to avoid a particular usability problem), when asked about reasons for their choice.

Mean difficulty of choice

Neutral/less expensive Better/more expensive

2

1 Usability

Study 2: Why not taking beauty? It is for free!

Beauty Attribute

Accordingly we expected:

Figure 1: Mean difficulty for either choosing the neutral/less expensive or the better/more expensive phone separately for usability and beauty (Study 1).

If the attribute was beauty (H2a), choosing the better phone was perceived as more difficult than choosing the neutral phone (neutral: mean(M)=1.96; better: M=1.68, t(210)=2.1; p<.05). In contrast, if the attribute was usability, an opposed (however not significant) tendency was found (H2b): choosing the neutral phone was perceived as more difficult than choosing the better phone (low: M=1.96; high: M=1.68, t(206)=1.6; n.s.). The analysis of variance further revealed a main effect of price level, with the choice difficulty being rated higher in the high price level condition (M=1.83) compared to the low price level condition (M=1.57), F(1, 412)=6.9; p<.01. This simply indicates that higher expenses generally induce a more detailed and, thus, more difficult choice process. All other main effects and interactions remained insignificant.

This first study revealed a substantial difference in the way people consider usability or beauty in a particular choice situation. While it appears to be generally accepted to strive for better usability and to spend an extra 50% on it, for beauty it is not. The difference in the pattern of choice difficulty depending on the attribute is a clear indicator for

• H1a: The more beautiful phone will be chosen more frequently • H1b: The nature of the respective usability problems will take no effect on choice (otherwise the usability problems would differ in severity) • H2: Although participants base their choice on beauty, they will nevertheless mention usability issues as reasons for their choice Just like in the previous study our choice situation required participants to choose between two mobile phones. This time, we did not only describe the phones, but manipulated beauty by the visual presentation of the phones. Figure 2 (next page) shows the two phones. They were from the same brand (which was actually removed), of the same price range and released at about the same time. Pictures were further edited to remove any indications of additional features such as a camera. In a pre-test, 277 participants were asked to rate the beauty of both phones on a 7-point scale (0=not beautiful, 7=very beautiful). A highly significant difference in beauty emerged ("A": M=3.9, standard deviation(SD)=1.7, "B": M=5.3, SD=1.6; t(276)=11.0; p<.001).

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phone provider assists them with the free choice between two new models. Thus, in contrast to the previous study, price did even play a lesser role. After choosing, participants were asked to state their main reasons for their respective choice in an open question format. Responses were either coded as mentioning usability alone, usability and beauty, beauty alone, or any other reason.

As expected (H1a), the more beautiful phone was chosen significantly more frequently (67%) than the less beautiful (37%), χ2=15.8; df=1; p<.001. Choice rates did not depend significantly on the respective usability problem (keys: 46%, letters: 54%), χ2=0.8; df=1; n.s. (H1b).

Figure 3 shows the percentage of usability-related (i.e., "usability alone" and "usability and beauty"), beauty-related or other reasons for choosing the more beautiful phone.

Figure 2. Mobile phones (Study 2)

60%

In addition to the pictures, participants were given a description of each phone, which was introduced as the result of a customer survey. Both phones were described as good, but having a single minor usability problem. These were that "some customers complained that keys are a bit too small and sometimes difficult to press" (keys) and that "some customers complained that letters are a bit too small and difficult to read in some menus" (letters). Both problems were described as minor and only experienced by some customers (a) to make choice possible at all (otherwise people may outright refuse to pick a phone from two bad ones) and (b) to create a situation were using those minor problems as major driver of choice becomes more problematic, in order to test the strength of the assumed justification processes.

The only experimental factor in this study was the matching of the usability problems with the phones. For half of the participants keys were matched with the less beautiful phone (A) and letters with the more beautiful phone (B), for the other half the matching was reversed. By balancing the matching of phones and usability problems and by randomly assigning participants to one of both conditions, one can ascertain that any observed preference for phone B (more beautiful) over phone A (less beautiful) is due to the difference in beauty and not due to differences in the acceptability of the two usability problems. If participants would actually make their choice on the basis of usability rather than beauty, differences in choice rates for keys versus letters would emerge and – by the cross-matching with beauty – both models, the beautiful and the less beautiful, would be chosen with the same frequency.

Just like in the previous study we used a between subjects design and data was collected online (in German language).

Participants (N=134, 90 female, mean age=24 years, min=19, max=50) were randomly assigned to the two conditions. This time, the cover story asked participants to imagine that their phone just got broken. Luckily, their

% participants

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% "Usability" or "Usability and beauty"

"Beauty"

Other Reason

Reasons for choice Figure 3. Reasons stated as decisive for choosing the more beautiful phone (Study 2)

As expected, the majority of those, who already chose the more beautiful phone, acknowledged usability as fully or at least partially decisive (55%, 26% "usability alone," 29% "usability and beauty"), no matter which of the two usability problems was given. Only 39% stated beauty or design as crucial and 6% gave reasons which were neither related to beauty nor usability.

The choice behavior in the present study clearly demonstrated that beauty is not irrelevant, that people perceive it and care for it. If participants had ignored the difference in beauty, the choice rates would have been close to 50% or would have rather depended on the different usability problems. Of course, in the present situation, choosing the more beautiful phone was made easy, as long as usability problems were minor and beauty was "for free".

Nevertheless, participants frequently referred to the severity

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of the respective, spurious usability problem (although those did not actually influence choice rates).

The downplaying of beauty as the driving factor for choice highlights the difficulty of justifying beauty. Our choice situation just provided the perfect opportunity to satisfy the desire for beauty but to back up the choice with arguments related to a central, easy to justify, rational attribute (usability).

STUDY 3: Beauty vs. usability – the final battle

So far, the consequences of a direct trade-off between usability and beauty remain an open question. Will people give in to their desire for beauty, even if this involves the explicit acceptance of flaws in usability? Or will the pursuit of rationality rather outweigh the potential value of beauty?

In our third study, beauty was accompanied by a lack of usability and vice versa. We provided a global usability rating for a number of mobile phones, which was introduced as the result of a test report and given as a numerical value. Thus, there was no tolerance to (re)interpret usability in a more personal way or to construe it as supporting a latent preference for beauty as in the previous study. One could either choose a predominantly beautiful or a predominantly usable phone.

Given the findings of the previous study, which suggest that justification does play a role, explicitly placing beauty above usability should feel "wrong" (i.e., is hard to justify) and, thus, will become unlikely. Hence, we now expect a shift to the "rational" option:

the less beautiful phones. Thus, phones A and B were predominantly usable, whereas phones C and D were predominantly beautiful.

Again, data collection was conducted online (in German).

Participants (N=123, 83% female, mean age=24 years, min=18, max=48) were asked to imagine that their mobile phone contract was expiring, but they plan to extend it. In return, they will get a new free phone, which can be chosen from a set of four. The pictures of the four mobile phones were presented all at once (just like in Figure 4).

Participants were told that all phones had the same features and due to the fact that they could not test the handling of the phones, additional results of a test report on usability were provided. The usability rating of each phone was placed just below its picture. Participants were then asked to choose one of the phones.

As expected (H1), the predominantly usable (and less beautiful) phone was chosen more frequently (58%) compared to the predominantly beautiful (and less usable) phone (42%), χ2=4.00, df=1, p<.05. Even though usability ratings for each phone were in the medium range and the difference between them was just 2 points (which corresponds to only 13% of the whole rating scale), the majority of participants did not accept a shortcoming in usability.

Figure 5 compares the choice rates for beauty in a situation where justification was easy (Study 2) with the present Study 3, which made justification rather difficult.

• H1: In the case of the direct trade-off, people will prefer usability to beauty

80%

Participants could choose from a set of four different mobile phones, which we selected based on a pre-test (see Figure 4).

60%

less beautiful more beautiful

% choice

70%

50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% easy (Study 2)

hard (Study 3)

Justification

Figure 5. Choice rates in Study 2 and Study 3 Figure 4. Mobile phones (Study 3)

Besides the pictures of the phones, participants were given the results of a "test report" concerning the usability of each phone. Usability ratings were given on a 15-point-scale (1=very poor, 15=very good) and all specific ratings were presented as ranges indicating a variation in testers’ judgments. The range was 6-8 (a median value of 7) for the more beautiful phones and 8-10 (a median value of 9) for

The reversal of choice is striking. Depending on the situation, people either chose beauty (a desired, but hard to justify attribute) or usability (a less desired, but easy to justify attribute) (chi-square test of association, χ2=17.7; df=1; p<.001.)

DISCUSSION

The present studies show that people appreciate beauty (Study 2), but don't want to "pay" for it, neither with money

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(Study 1) nor by accepting drawbacks in usability (Study 3). In Study 2, beauty was the driver for choice, but particular usability problems were given as the crucial, decisive reasons. On the contrary, in Study 3 the less beautiful but more usable product was chosen more frequently. We suggest that this shift in choice behavior is due to differences in ease of justifying the choice. While in Study 2 beauty could be justified easily by referring to usability aspects, Study 3 required the explicit trade-off between beauty and usability â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a situation which exerts considerable pressure for justification. In other words, beauty is valued but people discount it in situations which do not allow for easy justification. This is also supported by a study of Okada [14]. She showed that people in a choice situation (comparable to our Study 3) prefer a pragmatic to a hedonic good of the same nominal value, although people find the hedonic more attractive and would prefer it, if they would not have to justify their choice.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK

There are at least three limitations of our studies to be further discussed: (a) focusing on choice, (b) the hypothetical nature of choice and (c) the restriction to mobile phones.

First of all, the present studies deal with product choice rather than use. HCI and User Experience tend to focus their efforts on designing prolonged use and lasting experiences. In the real world, however, product choice and purchase are a crucial pre-requisite for future fulfilling experiences. If "we don't choose what makes us happy" [7], that is, if there is a systematic mismatch between product attributes we appreciate prior to choice and the product attributes we appreciate while product use later on, a focus on emotion, beauty, pleasure, insight and desire might even fail to take effect. Nevertheless, we will extend our research by, for example, employing a longitudinal perspective on experience [see 22] so that both aspects, choice and usage, will be included.

Secondly, we exclusively employed hypothetical choice scenarios instead of real ones. Although this is a common practice in psychology and consumer research, the reliance on hypothetical choices is not without debate. In the context of the endowment effect (i.e., a puzzling disparity between buying and selling prices), for example, one meta-analysis [6] found no difference in the size of the effect for real compared to hypothetical trading, whereas another found a reduction of effect size in a hypothetical situation [16]. We suggest that employing hypothetical choice as a proxy for real choice shouldn't be completely dismissed. Indeed, in the present case, it seems likely that hypothetical choice is rather working against our hypotheses, as long as one assumes that effects of justification may be rather amplified than attenuated by real choices. The fact that the expected effects of justification are apparent even in a hypothetical situation may thus, if anything, emphasize the robustness of our effects. Future research will surely address the consequences of beauty in real choice situations and

compare them to the findings from hypothetical choice situations.

Thirdly, we restricted the present studies to the domain of mobile phones. This is due to the fact that we consider mobile phones as an important category of interactive products in itself. In addition, we wanted a certain comparability of results in different choice situations.

Nevertheless, future studies will extend the findings to other product categories and domains to demonstrate the generality or boundaries of the "beauty dilemma". This will also include a deeper exploration of the relation between beauty and choice, such as the identification of variables that may moderate or mediate the revealed effects. So far, we included, for example, gender as a person variable. It had no effect; however it is conceivable that other variables, such as cultural differences, may turn out differently.

IMPLICATIONS

The "beauty dilemma" has some interesting implications for designers, usability practitioners and users. First of all, justification will inevitably play a role in any communication with potential future users. Other than proponents of a strongly task-oriented HCI, who may elicit requirements by observing people while they accomplish tasks, a more experiential view has to rely on people's selfreports of needs, feelings and desires. This may lead to a situation, where potential users discount beauty, visual design, and hedonic aspects, when it comes to the requirements of a new product (especially in the work domain). Note that this does not necessarily mean that people don't value these attributes. They are just harder to justify. In other words, people may demand utility and usability before choice, but will not enjoy the product later on.

This impacts our practices. Surely, many usability practitioners' first-hand experience seems to confirm people's general longing for usability. However, by inviting them into a "laboratory", an at least quasi-scientific setting, people might suppose to be expected to focus on task fulfillment, to be "sober" and act "rational". Thus, it might be not surprising that usability practitioners get their expectations confirmed. However, we argue for a more careful consideration of justification processes (and their consequences) in the context of user-centered design and we argue for methods that allow eliciting more experiential requirements by, for example, deliberately removing the need to justify.

The "beauty dilemma" is also interesting for vendors. It implies that interactive products with a surplus in beauty (and in price) are desired, but hard to sell. If sold, these products may create a devoted community through the experience they provide in addition to their primary function. On the other hand, primarily usable and useful products might be easier to sell, but may not create a strong, long term emotional attachment. Thus, it is surely advisable to pursue a two-way-strategy: to emphasize pragmatic

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aspects to convince the customer that a product is a rational choice, and ensure customer loyalty by beauty (or hedonics in general) to make the customer feel confident of this choice. Finding a balance between both is necessary, but nevertheless, challenging in practice.

Taking the notion of User Experience seriously requires us to address aspects of interactive product choice and use that go beyond mere task-accomplishment. Beauty is such an aspect. The present paper is one further step to better understand potential consequences of beauty and its relation to other judgments about interactive products, such as judgments of usability.

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