Complex searches can be overwhelming, leading to lots of opened tabs. This tab overload can make conducting searches on mobile devices especially difficult where screen real-estate is limited, and progress can often be interrupted. Rather than using tabs to manage information, we introduce browsing through scaffolding. Search result lists serve as mutable workspaces where progress can be suspended and resumed. BentoBrowser is available for download from the iPhone AppStore.

Abstract

People engaged in complex searches such as planning a vacation or understanding their medical symptoms are often overwhelmed by opening and managing many tabs. These challenges are exacerbated as search moves to smartphones and mobile devices where screen real-estate is limited and tasks are frequently suspended, resumed, and interleaved. Rather than continue to utilize tab-based browsing for complex search, we introduce a new way of browsing through a scaffolded interface. The list of search results serves as a mutable workspace, where a user can track progress on a specific information query. The search query serves as a gateway into this workspace, accessed through a task-subtask hierarchy. We instantiate this in the Bento mobile search system and investigate its effectiveness in three studies. We find converging evidence that users were able to make progress on their complex searching tasks with this structure, and find it more organized and easier to revisit.

Install Bento Browser

The version on the AppStore is the third iteration of the version from the CHI 2018 paper.

iPhone App (AppStore)

Video Demo

The version in the video is the second iteration of the version from the CHI 2018 paper.

Media Coverage

• Tech Explorist: A new web browser makes it easier to search on mobile devices
• THE Journal: New Bento Browser Organizes Complex Mobile Searches
• Science Daily: Bento browser makes it easier to search on mobile devices
• Prikk: “BENTO” ERLEICHTERT WEBSUCHE AUF MOBILGERÄTEN
• CMU News: Bento Browser Makes it Easier To Search on Mobile Devices
• CMU HCII: Bento Browser Makes it Easier To Search on Mobile Devices

Downloads

PDF Download

Citation

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Nathan Hahn, Joseph Chee Chang, Aniket Kittur. 2018.
Bento Browser: Complex Mobile Search Without Tabs.
In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18).
ACM, Montreal, QC, Canada.

Bibtex

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@inproceedings{Hahn:2018:Bento,
 author = {Hahn, Nathan and Chang, Joseph Chee and Kittur, Aniket},
 title = {Bento Browser: Complex Mobile Search Without Tabs.},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
 series = {CHI '18},
 year = {2018},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {Montreal, QC, Canada},
}