Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Dr. Christian Wolff, who encouraged me to start this dissertation in the first place, and who constantly offered me his support, advice and encouragement throughout the entire process. I have learned so much in the past years, and for this opportunity I am truly grateful. I also would like to thank Prof. Dr. Rainer Hammwöhner, for his helpful comments and stimulating discussions, which I always greatly appreciate. I would like to thank my fellow doctoral students from our doctoral seminar, for their support and feedback. I also would like to thank all my friends and colleagues at the University of Regensburg – I cannot think of a more inspiring and fun place to work at. In particular, I would like to thank Tim and Patricia for interesting discussions about patterns and usability evaluation methods. I also would like to thank Alex and Kaiser for their technical support with web server and JavaScript issues, and Bella, Saskia and Flo for their help with my empirical studies. Thanks also to the fearless proofreaders Johannes, Patricia, and Julia