Web Browsing and Online Research
8 papers in this research thread
This thread of research explores how people browse, collect, and make sense of information on the web, developing tools that reduce friction across the entire online research workflow. A foundational challenge is tab management: When the Tab Comes Due reveals the competing pressures that lead to tab overload, while Tabs.do addresses this with ML-powered task-centric tab grouping, and Bento Browser reimagines mobile search without tabs altogether. Beyond managing pages, lightweight interaction techniques help users capture information without breaking their flow: Wigglite introduces a novel "wiggle" gesture that lets users collect, rate, and triage content in a single motion with 58% less overhead, and Intentionally Uncertain Highlighting supports mobile sensemaking by letting users express uncertainty during highlighting. Finally, several systems support synthesizing online information into coherent structures: Fuse provides an always-available browser sidebar for in-situ collection and organization validated through a 22-month deployment, Mesh scaffolds comparison tables for consumer decision-making by bridging rigid decision support with fluid exploration, and SearchLens lets users compose personalized "Lenses" reflecting latent interests to explore review data more deeply.
Papers
When the Tab Comes Due: Challenges in the Cost Structure of Browser Tab Usage
TLDRHow tabs today are overloaded with a diverse set of functionalities and issues users face when managing them is investigated and design implications for future browser interfaces that can better support managing these pressures are developed.
Fuse: In-Situ Sensemaking Support in the Browser
TLDRFuse is introduced, a browser extension that externalizes users’ working memory by combining low-cost collection with lightweight organization of content in a compact card-based sidebar that is always available and discusses how these affordances help users externalize more of their mental model into the system.
Wigglite: Low-cost Information Collection and Triage
TLDRA new interaction technique called wiggling is explored, which can be used to fluidly collect, organize, and rate information during early sensemaking stages with a single gesture, with a 58% reduction in operational cost while being 24% faster compared to a common baseline.
Tabs.do: Task-Centric Browser Tab Management
TLDRA Chrome extension called Tabs.do is introduced, which explores bringing a task-centric approach to the browser, helping users to group their tabs into tasks and then organize, prioritize, and switch between those tasks fluidly.
Mesh: Scaffolding Comparison Tables for Online Decision Making
TLDRMesh bridges the gap between decision support systems that typically have rigid structures and the fluid and dynamic process of exploratory search, changing the cost structure to provide increasing payoffs with greater user investment.
SearchLens: composing and capturing complex user interests for exploratory search
TLDRResults from a controlled lab study suggest that the approach incentivized participants to express their interests more richly than in a baseline condition, and a field study showed that participants found benefits in SearchLens while conducting their own tasks.
Bento Browser: Complex Mobile Search Without Tabs
TLDRThis work introduces a new way of browsing through a scaffolded interface in the Bento mobile search system, finding converging evidence that users were able to make progress on their complex searching tasks with this structure, and find it more organized and easier to revisit.
Supporting Mobile Sensemaking Through Intentionally Uncertain Highlighting
TLDRThis work introduces the idea of intentionally supporting uncertain input in the context of saving information during complex reading and information exploration in a system that uses force touch and fuzzy bounding boxes along with posthoc expandable context to support identifying and saving information in an intentionally uncertain way on mobile devices.