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The role of context in perceptions of the aesthetics of web pages over time

<20> This work dispelled the idea propagated by two influential papers (Lindgaard et al., 2006; Tractinsky et al., 2006) that very early aesthetic judgements perpetuate and was cited in a CHI’2011 review of user-experience research (Bargas-Avila & Hornbæk, 2011). Two experiments demonstrate that context increases judgement stability from perceptions after brief exposure to those after self-paced exposure and from perceptions after self-paced exposure to those of after website use. Tractinsky’s principle “what is beautiful is usable” was not confirmed. We demonstrate that context is a pivotal factor influencing the stability of users' perceptions, which must be explicitly addressed in user-experience research.