1. LIFIA, Facultad de Informática, UNLP - Argentina
ICS, IRIT, Université Toulouse III - France
G. Bosetti, S. Firmenich, A. Fernández, M. Winckler & G. Rossi
From Search Engines to Augmented Search
Services: An End-User Development Approach
ICWE
2017
5. 5How users are supported?
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
1. Manual interaction with Web apps and Browser
2. Web Browser support for new search engines
7. 7Just an example
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
not
supported✗
supported✓
8. 8The Underlying problem
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
Not all search engines in the Web are directly available
from the browser’s ancillary search mechanisms
a. Disadvantage for «not popular» Web sites
b. End users have to wait for an extension to be
implemented
1
10. 10The Underlying problems
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
Not all search engines in the Web are directly available
from the browser’s ancillary search mechanisms
a. Disadvantage for «not popular» Web sites
b. You have to wait for an extension to be
implemented
1
Results are presented in a second context (a new tab)
a. Extra interactions for comparing
b. Time consuming
2
12. 12What?
1. Motivation 2. Augmented Search Services 3. Future work
An inside-in approach empowering users to customize their
searches, by
➔ defining Augmented Services matching the existing
search engines’ UI components
⬝ by means of DOM annotation and automation of
interaction with the DOM
➔ performing ancillary searches without leaving their
current Web context
⬝ by means of Web Augmentation
13. 13How, when, where, who?
1. Motivation 2. Augmented Search Services 3. Future work
➔ A Firefox extension
➔ On-demand
➔ In-situ, almost any Web site
➔ End-users
Benefits
➔ reuses existing search mechanisms & content
➔ transforms search results into domain objects
➔ reduces the user’s efforts for searching
⬝ time
⬝ interactions
➔ Integrates the resulting domain instances in the
current Web context
20. 20Preliminary results
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
Validation by construction
➔ Success definition in 18/20 first sites of the top 500 by Alexa
⬝ the ones with a search engine
⬝ in a language we could understand (not chinese or russian, sorry!)
⬝ with different top-level domain are considered just once
➔ composed by different UI controls. E.g.
⬝ 17 of the full list of sites have a trigger element
╶ 10 buttons, 6 inputs and 1 anchor
➔ With different “loading-data strategies”
⬝ full results in the html response
⬝ ajax call
⬝ https://sites.google.com/site/webancillarysearches/
22. 22Further work
➔ Experiment focused on non-technical end-users
⬝ potential of adoption
⬝ the usefulness of in-situ visualizations
➔ Consider defining metadata for Search Services
➔ Deep into domain-specific visualizers
➔ Collaboration in ...
⬝ Repo and communication platform for sharing
templates
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work
24. 24Disadvantages
➔ We did not create yet a solution involving
multi-interaction for selecting a single control (e.g.
hotmail)
➔ Resilience & security are the common challenges in Web
Augmentation
1. Motivation 2. Web Objects Ambient 3. Future work