BeauVis: A Validated Scale for Measuring the Aesthetic Pleasure of Visual Representations

TL;DR

This paper introduces BeauVis, a validated five-item scale designed to measure aesthetic pleasure in visual data representations, providing a standardized tool for researchers and practitioners.

Contribution

It presents the first validated scale specifically for assessing aesthetic pleasure in visualizations, developed through systematic review, expert input, and empirical validation.

Findings

BeauVis scale consists of five key items: enjoyable, likable, pleasing, nice, and appealing.

The scale was validated through a confirmatory survey with visualizations.

The study offers a systematic review of aesthetic terms used in prior research.

Abstract

We developed and validated a rating scale to assess the aesthetic pleasure (or beauty) of a visual data representation: the BeauVis scale. With our work we offer researchers and practitioners a simple instrument to compare the visual appearance of different visualizations, unrelated to data or context of use. Our rating scale can, for example, be used to accompany results from controlled experiments or be used as informative data points during in-depth qualitative studies. Given the lack of an aesthetic pleasure scale dedicated to visualizations, researchers have mostly chosen their own terms to study or compare the aesthetic pleasure of visualizations. Yet, many terms are possible and currently no clear guidance on their effectiveness regarding the judgment of aesthetic pleasure exists. To solve this problem, we engaged in a multi-step research process to develop the first validated rating scale specifically for judging the aesthetic pleasure of a visualization (osf.io/fxs76). Our final BeauVis scale consists of five items, "enjoyable," "likable," "pleasing," "nice," and "appealing." Beyond this scale itself, we contribute (a) a systematic review of the terms used in past research to capture aesthetics, (b) an investigation with visualization experts who suggested terms to use for judging the aesthetic pleasure of a visualization, and (c) a confirmatory survey in which we used our terms to study the aesthetic pleasure of a set of 3 visualizations.