University of Twente Student Theses
Creating warmth through visual hierarchy in UX design; enhancing engagement and social connectedness with a charity website
Plaizier, Daphne (2024) Creating warmth through visual hierarchy in UX design; enhancing engagement and social connectedness with a charity website.
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| Abstract: | Charities in the Netherlands are confronted with difficulties in recruiting volunteers and obtaining donations, despite the increasing importance of assisting those in need. Therefore, it is essential to investigate how the perceived warmth of a website's user experience (UX) design affects social connectedness and engagement with a charity. Previous research has demonstrated that creating a feeling of warmth can enhance engagement and social connectedness, as these factors are linked. This study provides insights into how to create a relationship with a charity through a website, using visual hierarchy design cues of shape, colour, and typography on feelings of warmth, social connectedness, and engagement. The cues that naturally attract the eye first, according to Gestalt principles, are shape, colour, and typography. Eight website mock-ups were created with warm and/or cold visual hierarchy design cues to measure how colour (warm; yellow based opposed to cold; blue based), shape (warm; soft rounded opposed to cold; hard angular), and typography (warm; rounded legible opposed to cold; square illegible) affect feelings of warmth and therefore social connectedness and engagement. This is done in a 2 x 2 x 2 experimental research design. The results showed that typography has a significant effect and shape a marginal effect on the User Experience of a charity website. Next to that, effects of warm shapes, colours, and typography on feelings of warmth, engagement, and social connectedness were found. Only marginally significant interaction effects were found that point into the expected direction. This suggests that visual stimuli alone are not enough to influence a website user. Furthermore, congruency is found when warm colours and typography and cold shape is used. Shape had a very weak effect throughout the analyses. This indicates that aesthetics, design trends, or trustworthiness is deemed more important in shape. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Clients: | Barendrechtse Uitdaging, Barendrecht, Nederland |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Programme: | Communication Studies MSc (60713) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/98362 |
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