Measuring Aesthetics of Mandarin Learning Web Pages: Are User's Perceptions Congruent with Aesthetics-Measurement Application (AMA)

Aesthetics of web pages refers to
how attractive a web page is in which it catches the
attention of the user to read through the information.
Visual appearance is important in getting attentions
of the users. It was found that there is a positive
correlation between the aesthetic aspects and the
perceived usability of Virtual Learning
Environments (VLE) interfaces [6]. It was also
found that those screens which were perceived as
aesthetically pleasing were having a better usability
[7]. It is thus suggested that the more aesthetic a web
page is, the more useful the web page can be.
Therefore, the measurement of aesthetics can be
viewed as an important task that should not be
disregarded. For this research, the positions of
objects, images element and texts element are
defined as objects in a multi screen interface and are
measured. Mandarin learning web pages used in this
research comprised of main pages, learning pages
and exercise pages, on the first author’s E-portfolio
web site. The web pages were manipulated
according to the desired aesthetic values. The six
aesthetics related elements used are balance,
equilibrium, symmetry, sequence, rhythm, as well as
order and complexity. On top of it, questionnaires
were distributed to the users to gather information on
the students’ perceptions on the aesthetic aspects.
Respondents for this study were students taking
Mandarin course level I at UiTM Terengganu. It was
found that the users’ perceptions were congruent
with the aesthetics values measured by using our
self-developed Aesthetics-Measurement Application
(AMA). Hence, our AMA perhaps can be introduced
as an effortless tool for web page aesthetics
measurement.