Like in many other circumstances in life.

A study performed in Japan in ‘95 showed that perceived usability of an ATM user interface is correlated to its aesthetics. The study was two year later re-iterated in Israel in order to verify if the results hold across cultures. And the results did hold. See the results in the original article here.

The article is  enjoyable to read. One paragraph from it talks about one cultural difference that the experimenters had to adapt for:

“The Japaynese interface included an image of a lady who is presumed to bow repeatedly to indicate that the system is processing. This concept was totally foreign to Israelis and potentially would have looked odd. Therefore, the image was replaced with a an image of an hourglass which is a more familiar representation of an active system in Israel.”

Somebody should someday do a study whether a bit of fun or witty content in an article is correlated with a higher perceived interestingness, importance or usefulness of the article :)

Ah, and the SF Moma zoomable UI is here