Usability, User Experience and Aesthetics : - A Case Study at Toyota Material Handling

Sammanfattning: Usability and User Experience are two important aspects in the design and develop-ment of software systems and websites. One part of this is the visual design, or aesthetics,of the system i.e., how does the product look to the user?In this study, it was investigated if adapting a website to a graphic profile would in-crease the overall user experience, and if changes to the visual design would affect howother areas of usability were experienced. The system that was studied was the web in-terface of a documentation server that was used by software developers at Toyota MaterialHandling Manufacturing Sweden AB (TMHMS) in Mjölby. To evaluate the research ques-tions, two surveys based on the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) were conducted. Thefirst survey was done before making changes to the website and the second survey after, asto be able to compare the experience of the users. Changes to the website, such as changingfonts and colors, were made in accordance to the graphic profile of TMHMS and the resultsshowed that the overall experience of using the website improved after these changes. Theresults also showed that aesthetic improvements had a positive impact on the perceivedusability of other areas. The results are consistent with previous studies made and pro-vides a good stepping stone for continued research into how visual design and consistentthemes may affect the user experience of websites and systems.