Machine assisted browsing for the naive user

ACM SIGIR Forum, 1989

In conventional Boolean retrieval systems, users have difficulty controlling the amount of output obtained from a given query. This paper describes the design of a user interface which permits gradual enlargement or refinement of the user's query by browsing through a graph of term and document subsets. This graph is obtained from a lattice automatically generated from the usual document-term relation. The major design features of the proposed interface are the integration of menu, fill-in the blank and direct manipulation modes of interaction within the “fisheye view” [Furnas, 1986] paradigm. A prototype user interface incorporating some of these ideas has been implemented on a microcomputer. The resulting interface is well adapted to various kinds of users and needs. More experienced users with a particular subject in mind can directly specify a query which results into a jump to a particular vertex in the graph. From there, the user can refine his initial query by browsing th...

Proceedings of the 2004 joint ACM/IEEE conference on Digital libraries - JCDL '04, 2004

2003

Designing the user interface of a federated system (what we call a browsing interface) must consider the knowledge gap that exists between desires of the users and the needs the systems are built to support. The concept of Habitable Interfaces aims to bridge the knowledge gap by providing kinds of representations and the interaction with these representations that are based on domain knowledge. Habitable Interfaces will allow the organising of currently disparate archives into cohesive domain specific federations of information resources. To approach designing Habitable Interfaces we propose a model of communication and a criterion.

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction, 1996

IEEE Expert, 1997

While the explosion of on-line information has brought new opportunities for nding and using electronic data, it has also brought to the forefront the problem of isolating useful information and making sense of large multidimensional information spaces. In response to this problem, we have developed an approach to building data \tour guides," called FindMe systems. These programs know enough about an information space to be able to help a user navigate through it, making sure that the user not only comes away with items of useful information but also insights into the structure of the information space itself. In these systems, we have combined ideas of instance-based browsing, structuring retrieval around the critiquing of previously retrieved examples; and retrieval strategies, knowledgebased heuristics for nding relevant information. We illustrate these techniques with examples of working FindMe systems, and describe the similarities and di erences between them.

Decision Support Systems, 2000

Compared with traditional business operations, WWW-based commerce has many advantages, such as timeliness, worldwide communication, hyper-links, and multimedia. However, there are also several browsing problems, such as getting lost, consuming a great amount of time browsing, and lack of customized interactive features. To acquire a competitive advantage over the countless number of Web sites, it is critical to solve these browsing problems. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review all browsing problems and then propose a system architecture for intelligent browsing on the Web. In this architecture, we present five kinds of browsing agents: recommendation agent, new-contents agent, search agent, customized agent, and personal-status agent. In order to support these agents, a user analyzer is provided to maintain the user profile by analyzing log files and CGI parameters. A site monitor is provided to maintain the site database by monitoring all changes to the site. We also developed a prototype to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system architecture. Finally, due to the time limitations, a laboratory experiment was carried out to verify the only value of the customized agent. The value of the agent was confirmed.

2013

1 1 We appreciate the support of NCR Corporation in providing funding for this research and SUN Microsystems in donating equipment.

1998

Compared with traditional business operations, wwwbased commerce has many advantages, such as timeliness, worldwide communication, hyper-links, and multimedia. However, lack of customized interactive abilities of traditional sales representatives is its major weakness. To get competitive advantages over the countless web sites, it is critical to have such customized interactive abilities. The purpose of this paper is to present a system architecture of intelligent-guided browsing on the web. In the architecture, we present five kinds of browsing agents: recommendation agent, new-content agent, search agent, customized agent, and personal-status agent. In order to support these agents, there are user analyzer to maintain the user profile by analyzing log file and CGI parameters, and site monitor to maintain the site database by monitoring all changes of the site.

1999

Abstract The need for friendly environments for effective information access is further enforced by the growth of the global Internet, which is causing a dramatic change in both the kind of people who access the information and the types of information itself (ranging from unstructured multimedia data to traditional record-oriented data). To cope with these new demands, the interaction techniques traditionally offered to the users have to evolve and eventually integrate in a powerful interface to the global information infrastructure.