@mastersthesis{meixl2015perceivedusability,
  author = {Alina Meixl},
  title = {{Äußere Einflussfaktoren auf die wahrgenommene Usability von mobilen Geräten}},
  year = {2015},
  month = {Mar},
  abstract = {{A common statement about producers of devices is that they manipulate their products purposefully
so they are broken earlier. Planned obsolescence refers to that effect and means the desired
aging of a device. Also other kinds of obsolescence have an impact on today's disposable-society.
The psychological obsolescence is one of them and claims that the performance of an older device
is measured lower than that of a new one. This could lead to perception mistakes caused by the
outer appearance of a device, lowering the perceived performance or usability of it. In a user study
we tried to verify this statement and looked for impacts of the outer appearance of a device on
the perceived usability and performance. For this purpose 39 participants, aged between 18 and
30 years, were asked to complete usual tasks on a smartphone such as writing an SMS or browsing
the web. Afterwards they gave their opinion on overall performance, usability, hardware, security
and multimedia performance. The used test smartphones were in three different states: new,
obsolete and one with a broken display. Each participant received one smartphone in one of these
states and completed all tasks with it, resulting in three groups of 13 members. Additionally the
time it took the participants to complete a task was measured. Evaluating the results, we found
no correlation between the state of a smartphone and the measured completion time, as well as
the perceived usability or performance. Furthermore the outer appearance did not have an impact
on the trust in external contents, in our study websites, nor on the readiness to pass on personal
information. But we found a correlation between state and perceived design of a smartphone,
partly the liking of the design of a website and the perceived stability of a device.}},
  address = {Innstra{\ss}e 43, 94032 Passau, Germany},
  school = {Lehrstuhl f\"{u}r Informatik mit Schwerpunkt Eingebettete Systeme, Universit\"{a}t Passau},
  type = {Bachelor's Thesis},
}