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Live Support has become a very important and necessary part of customer service for online retailers. The look and feel of the Live Support’s UI (User Interface) affects directly the UX (User Experience) perception of its user. One of the visual components of User Experience is Aesthetics. Our primary objective is to understand and measure the aesthetic value of the current Live Support UI from the top 6 online retailers (Amazon, Home Depot, Ikea, Nordstrom, Target and Walmart) using the VisAWI questionnaire. Our second objective is to understand the approach and knowledge of aesthetics of the UX/UI designers in the online community.
We first conducted one survey for measuring the aesthetics factors in the Live Supports of six online retailers. Then we conducted three more surveys to evaluate the knowledge of the UI/UX professionals regarding aesthetics factors, values, keywords and theories. According to the VisAWI questionnaire there are 4 factors that measure aesthetics in UI, which are Simplicity, Diversity, Colorfulness, and Craftsmanship. Our findings concluded that compared to the ecommerce benchmark of VisAWI the designs of the Live Support of the selected companies were above average in Simplicity and below average in Craftsmanship. For the qualitative survey on the professionals’ knowledge, the results showed that professionals predominantly knew about Simplicity and Colorfulness aspects. Furthermore, professionals drew on UAT (User Acceptance Testing) to measure aesthetics in their design.

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