Aesthetics and Usability in Digital Art Repositories: Using the iMedius Platform to Collect User Feedback Through Attention Tracking

Digital art repositories strive to disseminate works of art through the World Wide Web and to reach the widest possible global audience. To that end, providing an optimal user experience (UX) is essential. Usability is the cornerstone of UX in all interactions between the visitor and the platform, but at the same time, as virtual places of art and culture, digital art repositories aim to also provide an aesthetically pleasing interface that stimulates the senses. These goals are not always aligned, and how end users perceive the interplay between aesthetics and usability is an important factor in creating a balanced UX. This study presents a streamlined methodology for the collection of visitor insights concerning aesthetics and usability, taking advantage of the attention tracking capabilities of the iMedius platform. The iMedius Form Builder digital research tool allows the collection of both self-reported feedback through survey replies and candid data through gaze and mouse tracking, thus creating a robust dataset that can lead to interesting insights. An interactive questionnaire investigating user reaction to three different digital art repositories is presented, and feedback from higher education students from the fields of digital art and media is presented and analyzed in detail. Through this analysis, interesting insights are derived regarding striking a balance between high usability and memorable aesthetics.