Proceedings of the 26th annual international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in informaion retrieval - SIGIR '03 · 2003 · 30 citations · 0 references
ComputingComputer ScienceInformation SystemsHuman-computer InteractionInformation RetrievalUser Experience DesignEvaluation Of Retrieval SystemsInformation SearchSearch SystemsContextual CuesContextual SearchHuman-computer Interaction For SearchInformation Seeking BehaviorSearch AssistanceSearch Interface Design
Information retrieval systems are primarily built for discovery, yet much knowledge work requires locating and reusing information that has already been seen. The study describes the design and evaluation of the Stuff I've Seen system for facilitating information re-use and reports on its qualitative and quantitative use. SIS achieves re-use by maintaining a unified index of all previously seen information across modalities and leveraging contextual cues in its search interface. Over 230 employees use SIS, and early results show that time and people cues aid retrieval, users find information more easily, and they rely less on other search tools.
Most information retrieval technologies are designed to facilitate information discovery. However, much knowledge work involves finding and re-using previously seen information. We describe the design and evaluation of a system, called Stuff I've Seen (SIS), that facilitates information re-use. This is accomplished in two ways. First, the system provides a unified index of information that a person has seen, whether it was seen as email, web page, document, appointment, etc. Second, because the information has been seen before, rich contextual cues can be used in the search interface. The system has been used internally by more than 230 employees. We report on both qualitative and quantitative aspects of system use. Initial findings show that time and people are important retrieval cues. Users find information more easily using SIS, and use other search tools less frequently after installation.