user interactions with everyday applications as context for just-in-time information access
Our central claim is that user interactions with everyday productivity applications (e.g., word processors, Web browsers, etc.) provide rich contextual information that can be leveraged to support just-in-time access to task-relevant information. We discuss the requirements for such systems, and develop a general architecture for systems of this type. As evidence for our claim, we present Watson, a system which gathers contextual information in the form of the text of the document the user is manipulating in order to proactively retrieve documents from distributed information repositories. We close by describing the results of several experiments with Watson, which show it consistently provides useful information to its users.
user user user interaction applications context text information access informal access product processor web browser contextual information support requirements systems general architecture evidence documentation order distributed repositories experience task resource discovery relevance timing information agent users intelligent information access