However, most retrieval systems are made for specialist of searchers, and lack the user-friendly interfaces and support functions needed by expert searchers. Consequently, there is a need for a retrieval system enabling ordinary PC users to retrieve documents by themselves. We developed two full text interactive retrieval methods of retrieving newspaper articles and other documents. These systems allow users to express subtle nuances in their intended search targets, and allows searches with only vague clues through dialoguing with the computer. SearchSpace SearchSpace uses a 2-dimensional input space instead of the conventional logical formulas.
Users can perform a search by simply putting keywords in the space.
The X-axis of the input space represents the vagueness of the keyword's spelling. The Y-axis represents the priority of the keyword. Users place keywords in the space, and then according to the documents retrieved, they can modify the search specifications by altering keyword positions. The X-axis represents the number of documents which contain a given keyword in the entire database. The farther left a keyword appears, the fewer documents it appears in.