Interesting and impressive: exploring design factors for product graphics interchange format to enhance engagement

Abstract Product graphics interchange formats (GIFs) employ this format to show the features of the product and make up for the lack of physical experience online. These GIFs have been widely applied in domains such as e-shopping and social media, aiming to interest and impress viewers. Contrary to this wide application, most designers in this domain lack expertise and produce GIFs of varied quality. Moreover, the knowledge of techniques to enhance viewers’ engagement with product GIFs is also lacking. To bridge the gap, we conducted a series of studies. First, we collected and summarized seven design factors referring to existing literature and semi-structured interviews. Then, the impacts of these design factors were revealed through an online study with 106 product GIFs among 307 participants. The results showed that visual-related factors such as color contrast and moving intensity mainly impact viewers’ interest, while content-related factors such as scenario and style matching impact viewers’ impressions. The simplicity of GIFs also impressed viewers with a quick viewing mode. Finally, we conducted a workshop and verified that these results support large-scale production of product GIFs. Our studies might support the codesign methods of product GIFs and enhance their quality in design practice.