EXPLORING THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF WEB LOADING PAGE COLOURS, BRIGHTNESS VALUES, AND ICON SHAPES WITH PUPILLOMETRY

Contemporary websites typically follow a classic modern design philosophy: precise, highly structured, cold, and rational. This study examines how basic website design elements evoke emotions in users. Combinations of colour, brightness value, and icon shape were used to create twenty distinct iterations of web loading pages. Participants consisted of twenty undergraduate students from XYZ University. To analyse the participants’ emotional reactions to the stimulus, their pupil diameter measurements were taken using Tobii eye-tracking glasses, and they self-reported their emotional responses to each loading page verbally. The results showed that, on average, blue and green colours were associated with positive emotions, while red and yellow colours were more associated with negative emotions. The black and grey colours showed neutral emotional responses. The lighter brightness values of each colour ranked more positively on average than its darker counterpart. Icon shape differences had little impact on emotional responses. Pupil dilation changes show the blue and green pages have greater arousal than the yellow and red pages. This study provides evidence that web design elements, particularly colour and brightness value, significantly influence users’ emotional responses. As digital web design continues to evolve, studies similar to this could help educators and companies re-evaluate their traditional perceptions of web colour and icon shape decisions.