The balance between Aesthetics, Usability and Corporate Identity: Graphic User Interface design within a commercial company

This paper describes the search for a balance between aesthetics, usability and corporate identity in product development. This case study shows that usability has been integrated in the process for some time now. Aesthetics and corporate identity is relatively new and not yet incorporated at the same level. Over the past three years we developed a new software style called Ocean. For the first time, as a starting point of the design process, the design team created an aesthetic concept. During the following design process, small, splintered checks are carried out on usability and on perception. However, no overall test is carried out to evaluate the perception of the product as a whole. Do our users experience the software product as professional, independent and human? Do they recognise the Oce brand they know from earlier marketing campaigns? Looking back on the Ocean design process, aesthetics proved itself to be a valid requirement. Expanding our tests with professional checks on perception would complete the embedding of aesthetics in our design process. This is a bridge that still needs to be crossed. To be able to cross this bridge we, as graphic user interface designers, need proper evaluation methods, better information and more case studies. In other words, we need backup from the information visualisation field in order to achieve this acceptance