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Impact Factor:0.639 | Ranking:Computer Science, Software Engineering 78 out of 106
Source:2016 Release of Journal Citation Reports, Source: 2015 Web of Science Data

ScentIndex and ScentHighlights: Productive Reading Techniques for Conceptually Reorganizing Subject Indexes and Highlighting Passages

  1. Ed H. Chi1
  2. Lichan Hong1
  3. Julie Heiser1,2
  4. Stuart K. Card1
  5. Michelle Gumbrecht1,3
  1. 1Palo Alto Research Center, User Interface Research, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A.
  2. 2Work done while at PARC
  3. 3Work done while at PARC
  1. Palo Alto Research Center, User Interface Research, 3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304, U.S.A. Tel: +1650812 4312; fax: +1650812 4258; E-mails: echi{at}parc.com, hong{at}parc.com, julie.heiser{at}adobe.com, card{at}parc.com, mgumbrec{at}psych.stanford.edu
  2. Adobe Systems, 321 Park Ave., San Jose, CA 95110, U.S.A.
  3. Department of Psychology, Jordan Hall, Bldg. 420, Room 316, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305–2130, U.S.A.

Abstract

A great deal of analytical work has been carried out in the context of reading, in digesting the semantics of the material, the identification of important entities, and capturing the relationship between entities. Visual analytic environments, therefore, must encompass reading tools that enable the rapid digestion of large amounts of reading material. Other than plain text search, subject indexes, and basic highlighting, tools are needed for rapid foraging of the text. In this paper, we describe a technique that presents an enhanced subject index for a book by conceptually reorganizing it to suit particular expressed user information needs. Users first enter information needs via keywords, describing the concepts they are trying to retrieve and comprehend. Then our system, called ScentIndex, computes what index entries are conceptually related, and reorganizes and displays these index entries on a single page. We provide a number of navigational cues to help users peruse over this list of index entries and find relevant passages quickly. We report some initial results in a new technique called ScentHighlights that enhances skimming activity by conceptually highlighting sentences. Both use similar techniques by computing what conceptual keywords are related to each other via word co-occurrence and spreading activation. Compared to regular reading of a paper book, our study showed that users are more efficient and more accurate in finding, comparing, and comprehending material in our system.

  • Received June 23, 2006.
  • Revision received July 31, 2006.
  • Accepted September 19, 2006.
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