An interactive, smart notepad for context-sensitive information seeking

ABSTRACT

We are building an interactive, smart notepad system where users enter brief notes to drive a dynamic information-seeking process. In this paper, we focus on describing our work from two aspects: 1) dynamic interpretation of user notes in context to infer a user's information needs, and 2) automatic generation of data queries to satisfy the inferred user needs. Compared to existing information systems, our work offers three unique contributions. First, our system allows users to focus on what to retrieve instead of how, since users can use brief notes to express their information needs without worrying about specific retrieval details. Second, users can use notes to efficiently request multiple pieces of information at once instead of issuing one query at a time. Third, users can easily update any part of their notes to obtain new or updated information. Whenever a user's notes are modified, our system automatically detects and evaluates all affected note sections to retrieve new or updated information. Our preliminary evaluation shows the promise of this work.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Interaction styles (e.g., commands, menus, forms, direct manipulation)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Search process; Query formulation
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: User-centered design

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
automatic query formulation, context-sensitive information seeking, note-driven information retrieval