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.

Abstract 2
Acknowledges 3
List of Figures 5
List of Tables 5
Chapter 1: Introduction 6
1.1 Research background 6
1.2 Research objective 8
Chapter 2: Literature Review 9
2.1 Online customer service 9
2.2 Live Support 12
2.3 User Experience in Interface Design 13
2.4 Aesthetics 15
2.5 Aesthetics in User Interface’s User Experience 17
2.6 Measuring Aesthetics in UI 20
Chapter 3: Study on Current Live Support UI Aesthetics 22
3.1 Study Design 22
3.2 Selections of Live Support Interface for Study 24
3.2.1 Current Live Support Interface of Top Retailers 24
3.3 Data Collection 26
3.4 Analysis and Results 27
3.5 Discussion 31
Chapter 4: Study on UX/UI Professionals view on Aesthetics 32
4.1 Study Design 32
4.2 Data Collection 33
4.3 Analysis and Discussion 34
4.3.1 Qualitative feedback about live support aesthetics 34
4.3.2 Aesthetics and UI Design 34
4.3.3 Upwork screening question answer 36
Chapter 5: Conclusion 38
5.1 Summary of findings 38
5.2 Managerial Insight 39
5.3 Study limitation and future research 40
References 41
Appendix A: Live Support User Interfaces 44
Appendix B: Questions regarding Aesthetics in UI/UX 47
Appendix C: The requirements for the expected design (Upwork): 48

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