Acceptance of Visual Search Interfaces for the Web - Design and Empirical Evaluation of a Book Search Interface

Today, lists are the prevalent representation format for search results on the Internet (e.g. Amazon or eBay). While lists are well suited for specific queries, they are of little help for nonspecific queries. Theoretically, visual search interfaces outperform list interfaces for task types such as nonspecific queries, because they make use of additional semantic information (like price, date or review for a book). But what factors determine their acceptance in practice? We created a graphical interface for searching books and evaluated it in a 51 participant study using the technology acceptance model. The results show that the novel interface is congruent with the model whereas the textual interface differs significantly. Moreover, we found that the variable enjoyment is of higher relevance in visual search interfaces than previously stated. CR Categories: H.5.2 [User Interfaces]: Evaluation/ methodology—Graphical user interfaces (GUI); H.1.2 [User/Machine Systems]: Human factors—Software psychology