User Experience of Web Browsing - The Relationship of Usability and Quality of Experience

The experience of web services depends on multiple factors such as the usability of the service itself as well as influences on Quality of Experience (QoE) like waiting times. Existing studies so far have investigated both experimental factors (usability and QoE) in isolation, thus it is not possible to investigate dependencies between the two. In this study, we manipulated the usability and QoE of a news web page in the same experiment. Participants had to solve 9 tasks (three usability level and three QoE level, all combinations). Data (N=44) from two different sessions with different QoE manipulations were recorded: Simulation of initial page display delay via 1) a complete overlay and 2) a semi-transparent overlay. Our preliminary results show that the usability manipulation resulted in significant effects along multiple dimensions (QoE, aesthetic, and usability). Furthermore, also the implementation of the QoE manipulation had an effect on, e.g., performance parameters. Surprisingly, our results reveal that participants seem to be unable to rate the constructs usability and QoE independently from each other. Even after adding pronounced explanations of the constructs to the introductory phase of the second session of the experiment, the results still show a strong correlation between the two constructs. We thus recommend for similar future experiments to check beforehand whether Quality of Experience and Usability can be reliably judged and distinguished by naive participants.