A study to investigate the impact of visual interface design on user experience in web-based learning application

Abstract

The thesis describes a study of visual design experiences in a Web-based learning environment among students in higher education. This study consists of two consecutive empirical studies. The first study is a descriptive study which functioned as the refinement process to choose a number of appealing interfaces based on the users' selections of preferences. The outcomes of the first study are employed as stimuli interfaces in the second study. The second study is an experimental investigation to investigate the effect of the visual design of interfaces on students' emotions, learning performance, engagement, and readability of learning materials while interacting with the Web-based learning application. Both studies employed the same methods which were experiment, questionnaire and unstructured interview methods, generating both quantitative and qualitative data.