The advantages of a cross-session web workspace

Conducting research using the web is often an iterative process of collecting, comparing and contrasting information. Not surprisingly, web-based research tasks habitually span multiple web sessions and involve considerable web page revisitation. Such tasks are not only carried out by researchers, but also by casual web users who, for example, plan vacations and large purchases. Despite the prominence of this activity among web users, existing tools support it poorly. We propose an alternative approach, whereby web-based research tasks are facilitated by a web workspace which represents collected URLs with web page thumbnails. A prototype of our design was developed and studied in an evaluation with 12 participants. Each of the participants adopted the workspace approach instinctively: the workspace was used for web page revisitation, web page comparison, collection overview, cross-session task continuation, and continuous task focus. Categories & Subject Descriptors: H.5.2 [Infor...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CHI
• Authors: Kari-Jouko Räihä, Natalie Jhaveri
• Keywords: CHI 2005, Considerable Web Page, Human Computer Interaction, Web Page Revisitation, Web-based Research Tasks