Haystack: a user interface for creating, browsing, and organizing arbitrary semistructured information

ABSTRACT

Much past HCI research has examined the usability concerns of information management software for specific domains such as object-oriented software design, e-mail, and the Web. We believe that many of the results uncovered by these studies are applicable across multiple domains but that more broadly-scoped experiments require a system that can integrate multiple data sources. Haystack is a general-purpose information management environment designed to attack this very problem. Haystack's user interface, which incorporates capabilities from previous research such as context-specific visualization paradigms and attribute-based categorization, is built upon a highly expressive semistructured data model and data integration capabilities. In our demonstration we show how combination of a direct-manipulation-based UI paradigm and an expressive, federated data model can begin to address many of the information management problems plaguing general desktop computing today and can serve as a basis for further, yet unexplored, crossover information interaction experiments.

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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)

Keywords:
RDF, direct manipulation, semistructured data, views