While people can fluidly collect, make sense of and organize information across many online sources in their minds to make informed decisions, the amount of online information can be overwhelming and exceed people’s working memory. We introduce Fuse, a browser extension that combined low-cost collection with lightweight organization of web content in a compact card-based sidebar. Fuse helps users simultaneously extract key web content and structure it in a lightweight and visual way. A 22-month public deployment and interviews provide longitudinal insights into the collecting, externalization and structuring behaviors of real-world users conducting information foraging tasks.

Abstract

People spend a significant amount of time trying to make sense of the internet, collecting content from a variety of sources and organizing it to make decisions and achieve their goals. While humans are able to fluidly iterate on collecting and organizing information in their minds, existing tools and approaches introduce significant friction into the process. We introduce Fuse, a browser extension that externalizes users’ working memory by combining low-cost collection with lightweight organization of content in a compact card-based sidebar that is always available. Fuse helps users simultaneously extract key web content and structure it in a lightweight and visual way. We discuss how these affordances help users externalize more of their mental model into the system (e.g., saving, annotating, and structuring items) and support fast reviewing and resumption of task contexts. Our 22-month public deployment and follow-up interviews provide longitudinal insights into the structuring behaviors of real-world users conducting information foraging tasks.

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Kuznetsov, Andrew, Joseph Chee Chang, Nathan Hahn, Napol Rachatasumrit, Bradley Breneisen, Julina Coupland, and Aniket Kittur.
"Fuse: In-Situ Sensemaking Support in the Browser."
In Proceedings of the 35th ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium: UIST 2022.

Bibtex

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@article{kuznetsov2022fuse,
 title={Fuse: In-Situ Sensemaking Support in the Browser},
 author={Kuznetsov, Andrew and Chang, Joseph Chee and Hahn, Nathan and Rachatasumrit, Napol and Breneisen, Bradley and Coupland, Julina and Kittur, Aniket},
 booktitle = {},
 series = {UIST '22},
 year = {2022},
 location = {Bend, OR, USA},
 publisher = {ACM},
 address = {New York, NY, USA}
}