REFOCUS: Current & Future Search Interface Requirements for German-speaking Users

When looking at current research, there is plenty of existing work inquiring into how users use search engines1 and how future search interfaces could look like2. Yet, an investigation of users' perceptions of and expectations towards current and future search interfaces is still missing. Therefore, at this year's International Conference on WWW/Internet (ICWI '16) my co-author Martin Gaedke… Continue reading REFOCUS: Current & Future Search Interface Requirements for German-speaking Users

The Search Interaction Optimization Toolkit – The Essence of my PhD Thesis

My PhD thesis introduces a novel methodology that is named Search Interaction Optimization (SIO) and is used for designing, evaluating and optimizing search engine results pages (so-called SERPs). As a proof-of-concept of this new methodology, I've developed a corresponding SIO toolkit, which comprises a total of seven components1 (most of which have already been introduced in previous… Continue reading The Search Interaction Optimization Toolkit – The Essence of my PhD Thesis

Usability-based Split Testing or How to infer web interface usability from user interactions

The continuous evaluation of an e-commerce company's web applications is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Such evaluations are usually performed as split tests, i.e., the comparison of two slightly different versions of the same webpage with respect to a target metric. Usually, metrics that stakeholders are interested in include completed checkout processes, submitted… Continue reading Usability-based Split Testing or How to infer web interface usability from user interactions

StreamMyRelevance! Predicting Search Result Relevance from Streams of Interactions

Guessing the relevance of delivered search results is one of the biggest issues for today's search engines. The particular problem is that it's difficult to obtain explicit statements from users about whether they found what they were searching for. Clicks are commonly used to guess relevance (using so-called "click models") but they are far from… Continue reading StreamMyRelevance! Predicting Search Result Relevance from Streams of Interactions

4 Submissions accepted at International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE)

End of February, I submitted four contributions to the 14th International Conference on Web Engineering: two full papers, one demo and one poster. Of these four submissions, all were accepted and will be presented at the conference, which is to be held in Toulouse (see map below) from July 1 to July 4. In the… Continue reading 4 Submissions accepted at International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE)