Several researchers have noted the lack of specialised tools to support CIR (Shah, Marchionini and Kelly, 2009). Methods and tools used for CIR have not changed greatly since their inception. Although several novel tools to support CIR have been proposed, none have become widely used or recognised. In co-located, synchronous environments shared use of a personal computer is common. In these environments conversation is the simplest form of collaboration. When collaborators are remote, general purpose communication, such as email, instant messaging (IM) and telephone calls are the preferred methods of supporting collaboration (Morris and Horvitz, 2007). Five of the most important tools that have been developed for supporting CIR are described here: Ariadne, SearchTogether, Coagmento, Cerciamo, and Annotate!. These tools are reviewed below.
2.7.1 Ariadne
Twidale and Nichols (1998) describe a prototype interface, Ariadne, to support CIR using a graphical representation of search queries that can be manipulated and discussed by users. Ariadne takes advantage of the knowledge of the users. The researchers found that their system was more robust and adaptable than using an intelligent interface on its own. The domain of their research involved many users performing searches with the help of a small number of expert users. This is illustrated by the example of library users consulting librarians to help them find the information they are looking for. Recording the search actions proved advantageous so users can remember what has been tried and demonstrate their actions to other users. The Ariadne interface (Figure 2.3) uses a series of virtual cards to represent searches. Each contains a thumbnail image of the search results to remind users of the previous searches. Clicking on the card expands the information to show the previous results.
Figure 2.3: Ariadne Interface (Twidale and Nichols, 1998)
The Ariadne interface, although an early example, demonstrates that visualising search results can improve collaboration by providing virtual objects that can be manipulated and discussed by users of the system. Providing objects that can be manipulated may be a more intuitive form of interaction with a collaborative system.
2.7.2 SearchTogether
SearchTogether is a more recently developed application that allows groups of remote people to collaboratively search the web (Morris and Horvitz, 2007). It supports both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. The researchers motivated their tool with a survey of 204 knowledge workers to investigate current web search practices. The survey showed that the most common tools used in collaboration were emails, instant messages and phone conversations which could take place concurrently with the searching process. The researchers used these facts to motivate the design of SearchTogether, which incorporates IM as a tool to support collaboration.
SearchTogether uses histories of queries and page visitations together with ratings and comments to improve awareness. Clicking on a past query produces the results of the query from when it was executed, resulting in immediate and interactive access to past queries, to enable users to refind information. SearchTogether also displays page-specific metadata, including group members who visited their page together with their comments and ratings, which can help both to indicate important sites. Section 2.6.2 highlighted the importance of supporting awareness in CIR tools to reduce duplication of effort. Figure 2.4 shows a screenshot of the SearchTogether client (Morris and Horvitz, 2007).
Figure 2.4: SearchTogether client (Morris and Horvitz, 2007)
(a) IM, (b) query awareness, (c) current results, (d) recommendation queue, (e)(f)(g) search buttons, (h) page-specific metadata, (i) toolbar, and (j) browser
2.7.3 Coagmento
Shah (2010) presented Coagmento, a framework for supporting collaborative information seeking, synthesis and sense-making. Coagmento was designed to address the challenge of providing additional support to collaborators having found information and striving to synthesise and make sense of the information. Coagmento consists of a browser plugin, which includes a toolbar and a sidebar, and CSpace, an online collaborative space.
Coagmento provides functionality to collect, share, recommend, refind and reuse information. Value can be added to the information by the users in the form of ratings and notes. CSpace is a web based area designed to support information synthesis, where information can be organised and reports compiled to summarise the information. Figure 2.5 shows a screen shot of the Coagmento interface, illustrating the toolbar, sidebar and CSpace home page.
Figure 2.5: Coagmento screen shot (Shah, 2010) 2.7.4 Cerciamo
Cerciamo is a system that enables the synchronous, collaborative search of document collections (Golovchinsky, Adcock, et al., 2008). Cerciamo uses a unique method for dividing labour between users by their role in the group. Users are divided into two different roles, namely Prospectors and Miners. Prospectors discover potentially promising directions of exploration, whereas Miners follow these directions deeper into the results. Different interfaces are provided for these two different roles and a third interface provides a shared display of the progress of the session. Documents are presented to the Prospector in a list, on which queries and relevance judgements can be made. The Prospector’s role is to cover as much of the search space as possible. The Miner’s queue is
influenced by the Prospector’s efforts and is continually reordered in terms of the relevance associated with the documents by the Prospector.
2.7.5 Annotate!
Ginsburg (1998) describes Annotate!, a tool to add a collaborative dimension to a web search. Annotate! allows multiple participants to discuss single author documents, adding meta-information to documents that facilitates the searches of other users. Figure 2.6 shows the Annotate! interface. Annotate! assists collaborators by providing clues to the content of a document without having to open it. It also helps information persist by storing the associations that users have made between related web pages.