Maximilian Speicher

Maximilian Speicher, Andreas Both, Martin Gaedke

While smartphones are widely used for web browsing, also other novel devices like Smart TVs become increasingly popular. Yet, current interfaces do not cater for the newly available devices beyond touch and small screens, if at all for the latter. Particularly search engines -- today's entry points of the WWW -- must ensure their interfaces are easy to use on any web-enabled device. We report on a survey that investigated (1) users' perception and usage of current search interfaces, and (2) their expectations towards current and future search interfaces. Users are mostly satisfied with desktop and mobile search, but seem to be skeptical towards web search with novel devices and input modalities. Hence, we derive REFOCUS -- a novel set of requirements for current and future search interfaces, which shall address the demand for improvement of novel web search and has been validated by 12 dedicated experts.

Maximilian Speicher

According to Brooke [1] "Usability does not exist in any absolute sense; it can only be defined with reference to particular contexts." That is, one cannot speak of usability without specifying what that particular usability is characterized by. Driven by the feedback of a reviewer at an international conference, I explore in which way one can precisely specify the kind of usability they are investigating in a given setting. Finally, I come up with a formalism that defines usability as a quintuple comprising the elements level of usability metrics, product, users, goals and context of use. Providing concrete values for these elements then constitutes the investigated type of usability. The use of this formalism is demonstrated in two case studies. [1] J. Brooke. SUS: A "quick and dirty" usability scale. In P. W. Jordan, B. Thomas, B. A. Weerdmeester, and A. L. McClelland, editors, Usability Evaluation in Industry. Taylor and Francis, 1996.