Branded Interactions: Predicting Perceived Product Traits and User Image from Interface Consistency and Visual Guidance

Our connection to the digital world relies on brands, but human-computer interaction research seems still detached from such crucial phenomenon. On the web, stakeholders and designers operate with the assumption that great user interfaces benefit the perception of the brand behind the system, yet understanding which design factors affect which aspects of the brand image remains a largely uncharted territory. To investigate this problem, we manipulated interface consistency and visual guidance of an anonymized university website and gauged the user perception (N = 261) of three well-known branding constructs: brand as product, user image and brand personality. Unexpectedly, consistency did not significantly predict brand image, while the effect of visual guidance on brand perception showed a remarkable gender difference. Whenvisual guidance was significantlyworsened, females becamemuchless satisfied with the university in terms of brand as product (teaching, research quality and student support) and user image (students' characteristics and social skills). In contrast, males'perceptions of the university's brand image stayed the same in most circumstances. The reason for this gender difference was revealed through a set of two-group path models, which inspires new research directions to unpack even more the nexus between branding and interaction design.