Institute of Art Design + Technology
Dún Laoghaire

Ciara Little 

BSc [Hons] Applied Psychology

I am in my final year of the BSc (Hons) in Applied Psychology at IADT. I want to pursue a career in User Experience (UX) design with the thought of doing a Masters in Graphic Design. While my degree has educated me in psychology and User Experience Design, it has also helped me develop my confidence and organisational and interpersonal skills through group work. Below, I elaborate on my group IT project in my 3rd year of the degree and explain how I used it for my final project. My undergraduate major research project on The Effects of Colour Harmony on Perceived Aesthetics and UX is summarised below.

IT Project - GroupPro

For a module in 3rd year, I took part in a group IT project. We proposed an app called “Group Pro” that aimed to provide easy group collaboration. With the combination of a progress tracker and a checklist, users would be able to view their own and each other’s progress and determine how much work remains to be completed. Additionally, with a messaging function, individuals could communicate effectively during the process of group work. We created this idea to allow for a single app, designed for students by students, that contains all the necessary functions, saving space in the user’s device and making creating a group project easier.


Major Research Project - Project Objectives

Mobile apps have grown hugely in popularity over the last few years. What interested me was why people find some apps better than others. I wanted to study the effects certain visual aspects have on the user's experience. I chose to use GroupPro to observe the difference that types of colour and their relationship with each other, have on how a person experiences an app and how they think it looks. The final project objective was to see if there was a difference in people's experiences based on the app's colour harmony. A between groups quasi- experimental design and a quasi- experimental method was employed. Data of 58 participants, age 20-59yrs (M=25.67,, 69% female, 31% male) was used for statistical analysis.


Project Outcomes

Results suggested that the harmony of colour can affect a person's experience of an app and most participants preferred the disharmonious colour version of GroupPro. The findings may be applied to digital design, app design and website design. Future studies would benefit from this by building on colour theory and the halo effect to improve the interest in digital interfaces. These results may also help eliminate issues in user interface design and accessibility.