The association between aesthetic appeal and semantic distance of icons varying in concreteness: Shedding light on the aesthetic-usability effect

• 120 icons’ semantic distance (SD) and aesthetic appeal (AA) were assessed. • Strongest predictors were concreteness for SD and icon style familiarity for AA. • SD and AA have only a tiny inverse association when controlling for other factors. • The aesthetic-usability effect seems to be very weak in icons. • Familiarity might be the strongest factor for aesthetic-usability effect in icons. The aesthetic-usability effect asserts a positive relationship between icons’ aesthetic appeal and usability, but the strength and direction of the effect are still under debate. In user interfaces, icons are key components for fluent HCI, with their usability depending on semantic distance. Although previous studies have investigated factors influencing icon cognition, the relationship between aesthetic appeal and perceived usability remains unclear, especially when controlling icon concreteness and other influencing factors. Here, we study the relationship of aesthetic appeal (AA) of icons to their semantic distance (SD), with a particular focus on icons varying in concreteness. We also investigate how strong this effect is compared to other factors, such as familiarity. We conducted a behavioral experiment ( N = 46) to assess AA of icons while measuring their SD as response times in icon-function semantic matching task. We employed generalized linear mixed-effects models to analyze the relationships between the variables. Our findings indicate that icon concreteness was the strongest predictor of SD (weak effect), whereas familiarity with the icon style was the strongest predictor of AA (moderate effect). This suggests that the aesthetic-usability effect is weak for icons when controlling for other factors. While aesthetics can influence usability and vice versa, other confounding variables such as familiarity and concreteness appear to play a greater role. Particularly, familiarity with icon style may be the strongest explanatory factor for the apparent aesthetic-usability effect in icons. Our study provides insights into how inter-individual and contextual factors shape the complex relationship between icon aesthetics and usability.