Röst- och tangentbordssökning i Google : En studie om relevans och sökbarhet

Sammanfattning

Looking for information online is something most people do on a daily basis. The differences in searching on a computer and voice-based searching on smartphone are highly relevant to the usability of search engines. These differences could affect the way people behave, how useful they felt the results were, and how easily they found what they needed. Five participants, aged 20 to 26, took part in tests and interviews. The participants were observed during their searches to examine things such as the length of queries, the phrasing of questions, and how the participants judged the results of their queries. At the same time, the data observed were analysed in relation to theories on searchability, language, and information retrieval. The analysis of this data revealed patterns in the participants’ interaction with the search engine. Differences were apparent within the results. Keyboard searches would often lead to more precise results, and voice searches generally were longer and held a conversational tone. The usefulness of the results the participants received from their queries was affected by various factors such as word choice, question phrasing, and, for searches using voice, pronunciation. Participants felt more confident and in control when typing, while voice searches were still found to be fast and easy to use. While keyboard searches generally provided accurate results, voice searches had issues not present in keyboard searching. These issues mainly related to pronunciation and misrecognized words. These results show that when designing a searching system, attention is required towards both human and technological factors.