Digital Index Card Creation and Managementfor Memorizing What You See on the Web
Yuna Saka1 , Yoshiyuki Shoji1,2[0000−0002−7405−9270] ,Hiroaki Ohshima3[0000−0002−9492−2246] , andKouzou Ohara1[0000−0002−7399−2472]
1

Aoyama Gakuin University,
Sagamihara, Kanagawa 252–5258, Japanyuna@sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp, ohara@it.aoyama.ac.jp
2
Shizuoka University,
Hamamatsu, Shizuoka 432–8011, Japanshojiy@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
3
University of Hyogo,
Kobe, Hyogo 651–2197, Japanohshima@ai.u-hyogo.ac.jp

Abstract. This paper proposes a method of enabling users to memorize
important information obtained from daily Web browsing by letting them
manage their browsing history as cards. People always encounter a lot of
information on websites, but most of it is forgotten even if needed later.
Therefore, we implemented a memory retention support system basedon card creation and management. This system allows users to makecards semi-manually using their website browsing history. The system
displays the cards in an easy-to-view manner and provides management
functions. By creating and organizing the cards that summarize their
daily browsing activities and reviewing the cards they collected, users
can realize what they value and recall necessary information more easily.
The results of the user study in which the participants used the system
for a Web search task demonstrated that the proposed semi-manual card
creation has positive effects on memory retention after four days.
Keywords: Information Access · Memory · Browsing History · Index
Card.

1

Introduction

Historically, people have used cards to summarize unorganized information andmake it stick in their memory. Such cards used to manage and learn from information are generally called “Index Cards,” and many applications and styles
are being introduced. Organizing and remembering information through cardmanagement is common and leads to the proposal of various applications.
Here, let us consider a method to apply such card-based memory retention
techniques to Web browsing. Organizing miscellaneous information on the Web
as cards will likely make it stay in one’s memory. In addition, looking back at

2Y. Saka et al.

Sorting
54mm
Drag and drop
keywords into the cardTags

86mm

Keywords extracted fromwebsite browsing history

Important keywords areinitially added to the card

Fig. 1. A screenshot of the proposedsemi-manual card creation.

To create a new card, need to scroll to the bottom

Fig. 2. A screenshot of the proposed
card list for review.

the created cards and comparing them with the previously accumulated cards
will make the user aware of their interest and aid in decision-making.
To this end, this paper proposes a system that takes a day’s website browsing
history as an input and allows users to summarize it as cards semi-manually.
Figure 1 shows an overview of the system. With the support of this system,
users can summarize information gained from the websites visited on that day
into a card about the size of a business card.
The system also allows users to collect and manage the cards they created,
as shown in Figure 2. Before proceeding to the card-making process, the systemshows the list of cards the user has previously created. As a result, users cancreate, collect, and manage cards daily, allowing them to organize and make useof important or interesting information from the Web.
For evaluation, we implemented a Google Chrome browser extension prototype to prove that such a system is helpful. We conducted a subject experimentthat lets participants use our prototype system for an information retrieval task,and checked the degree of memory retention after four days.

2Related Work

This section introduces some related studies on website browser history analysis,card-making in the field of education, and lifelog analysis and visualization.
2.1

Web Browsing History Analysis

The analysis of Web browsing history that aims at making browsing experiencesmore comfortable and meaningful has been researched frequently. As an example,
Wexelblat et al. [7] propose a method to visualize the users’ paths during website
browsing as a graph. There are several studies that visualize website browsing
history and encourage knowledge retention. For instance, Xu et al. [8] express
website browsing history as an undirected semantic graph based on a springmodel. Our research focuses on encouraging users to look back at websites andalso keep important information in memory. Also, our approach expects positiveeffects from creating cards semi-manually. This relates to the effect in which

Digital Index Card Creation and Management

3people feel attached to things they make on their own, known as the “Ikea
Effect [3].”2.2

Card Making in Education

Since information cards written in the past are considered precious information
resources, there are some studies attempting to digitize such cards [2]. “HyperCard”, one of the most famous Wiki-like electronic card management systems,
is proven to be effective for education [1]. Hidayat et al. [4] propose a method
to associate paper information cards and electronic devices with an education
support system for smartphones using AR (Augmented Reality) technology. Our
study aims to apply such phenomenon that these cards are effective for memory
retention and organization to Web browsing.
As a method to create paper cards from operation history, Shoji et al. [6]propose an application to automatically presume the interests of the visitorsfrom their museum guide device and create a postcard as a souvenir.
2.3

Lifelog Analysis

Website browsing history is related to lifelog analysis, which analyzes photographs and activity data for visualizing and recording what users saw. As
an example, Pirsiavash et al. [5] propose a method to analyze photographs as
lifelogs and determine what events occurred at certain times.
In contrast to such lifelogging strategies, webpage information is more complex since it contains more detailed information and involves doing several tasks
simultaneously using multiple tabs. Therefore, we propose a method to manage
information semi-manually instead of classifying and choosing a representativeout of it automatically.

3MethodThis section will cover our methods using the actual implementations for Google
Chrome as an example. Our system consists of a Google Chrome extension API
module for loading website browsing history, a front-end module for card making,and a server-side module for storing and organizing cards.
3.1

Extraction of Phrase Candidates from Website Browsing
HistoryFirst, the system reads the webpage contents from the website browsing history
using the Google Chrome API and infers important keywords. Next, morphological analysis is applied to the webpage titles in the loaded website browsing
history. After extracting all words with the analyzer, words analyzed as nouns are
selected as candidates for the important keywords. The keywords’ importance ischosen from three ranks according to the number of times they appeared in thetitles of the accessed webpages.

4Y. Saka et al.

3.2

Memory Retention Support with Semi-Manual Card Making

When the user calls the system, it will call the API, extract words from theday’s browsing history, and calculate the importance of each word. Words withrelatively high importance ranks are added to the cards automatically. In theinitial state, the font size of the keywords is proportional to the three ranks ofimportance, and the font colors are set based on this ranking as well.
Users can edit the keywords on this card by adding keywords from the given
list or the keyword input textbox and removing keywords from the card. Therotation angle, size, and color of the keywords on the card and the card’s background color can be modified. In addition, users can add tags to the cards forgrouping.
3.3

Reflection Support with Card Management Interface

Immediately after activating the system, the screen shows a random list of thecards the user created. The cards on the list can be rearranged in the order of
their creation date, or they can be grouped based on their keywords or tags.
Additionally, the view of the list can be changed to only show certain cards byindicating keywords or tags the cards contain in common. Each card on the list
can be enlarged, and users can revisit the links they have visited from the URLs
associated with each keyword on the card.
The system tries to increase the frequency with which users look back at
cards created in the past. Therefore, the card-making button does not appear
on the initial screen, and the user has to scroll through the card list screen tofind the button at the end.

4

Evaluation

We empirically evaluated the memory-retention-support effect of the proposed
method through short-term website search tasks.
4.1

Comparison Methods

In the experiment, the effects of making cards semi-manually and reviewing cards
are evaluated by comparing the following five methods:– Semi-manual creation + Review: participants can create cards semimanually and review them by managing the cards;– Semi-manual creation + No Review: participants can create cards semimanually, but they cannot review the cards;– Automatic creation + Review: participants only get to review the cards
created automatically;– Automatic creation + No Review: participants only get to see the cards
immediately after they are automatically generated;– No assistance: participants are not involved in card-making or reviewing.

Digital Index Card Creation and Management

5

Table 1. The average ratio and number of items remembered immediately after thetask and four days later (two subjects for each task, maximum of seven items).
Immediately afterSemi-manual Creation + Review1.00 (7.0 / 7.0)
Semi-manual Creation + No Review 1.00 (7.0 / 7.0)
Automatic Creation + Review
0.93 (6.5 / 7.0)
Automatic Creation + No Review 1.00 (7.0 / 7.0)
No Assistance
1.00 (7.0 / 7.0)

4.2

4 days later
0.93 (6.5 / 7.0)
1.00 (7.0 / 7.0)
0.57 (4.0 / 7.0)
0.86 (6.0 / 7.0)
0.79 (5.5 / 7.0)

Experimental Tasks

In the short-term evaluation experiment, the participants were provided with
one of these two tasks:– Make a travel plan to Hamamatsu City (a local area in Japan);– Think of a menu for a casual wedding party.
Participants were assigned to each of the ten patterns that can be formed fromthe combination of the two tasks and the five methods (see Section 4.1). Eachparticipant was assigned seven items consisting of a decision target and several
requirements to investigate for the given task.
The participants were given 20 minutes to search the Web for information to
help them decide about the items in the task. After searching, the participants
either started making cards, reviewed the cards they created, or simply did
nothing, according to the assigned card-making method. When the participants
finished these, they were orally asked about their decisions for each item in thetopic. Four days later, the participants were asked what they remembered about
their final decisions for the items again.
4.3

Experimental Results

Table 1 shows the average number and ratio of the items the participants could
recall on the day of the short-term experiment task and four days after that day.
In evaluating the memory consistency of the items immediately after the task
and several days later, cases in which participants forgot the main contents werejudged as “inconsistent memory.”
The results show that the memory consistency rates of the participant groups
that made cards semi-manually were relatively high on the day of task execution and several days later. However, regardless of card making, the participantgroups that reviewed the cards had lower memory consistency rates.

5Discussion

This section discusses the effectiveness of creating cards semi-manually and reviewing them based on the results of the evaluation experiments.

6Y. Saka et al.

The participants who edited the cards tended to have a high memory consistency rate several days later. From this result, it can be inferred that editing
cards manually has a specific effect on memory retention. On the other hand,participants involved in card management had comparatively lower memory consistency rates than those who were not involved. Therefore, we could not seek apositive effect from organizing cards.

6Conclusion

In this paper, we proposed a system that allows users to retain the information
they gained from the internet on a particular day by summarizing and organizing
their website browsing history with cards. From the results of the short-term
evaluation experiment, it can be concluded that the proposed semi-manual cardmaking has some effect on memory retention.
We plan to conduct a long-term experiment to verify the effects of card
editing and organizing in the future. Furthermore, we would like to upgrade thesystem’s functions to improve its usability and increase the memory retention
support effect.

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants Number 21H03775,
21H03774, and 22H03905. The research was also supported by ROIS NII OpenCollaborative Research 2023 (Grant Number 22S1001).

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