There has been quite some work aiming at improving this attribute, and most of them just described it as the ease of discovering or locating something in the interface. I wonder if there is a more formal definition that coined this term? I'd appreciate if a reference to it is provided.
Good question! Perhaps the concept of visual search performance comes closest.
I have came across some papers that helps the 'discoverability' of the content in the interface. Mostly, paper I found described the use of design element (such as icon, glyphs etc) in the interface to highlight to improve discoverability. However, formal definition only exist in this matter if you are considering a homogeneous design interfaces (such as search user interface).
In SQuaRE (Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation), They use one factor called understandability. But the measurement technique was (number of input/output items that user can indentify/ number of input/output items available from the interface). I believe it is similar like discoverability.
I mean that discoverability should not be used as an attribute. Discoverability is a nominalized verb. So we should speak about a use scenario "User discovers something...". Along this scenario it is possible to review and test known usability requirements as described in ISO 9241.
Still one possiblity would be to use "intuitive", with some further explanation like Gunter Dubrau said (users find it easy to discover the location of...).
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