Trailist Focusing on document activity for assisting navigation Sun Technology Research Excellence Center (SunTREC) Salzburg Research, Austria — 16. August 2001 — Erich Gams Sigi Reich 18 October 2019
Overview The notion of trails Application of trails Focusing on document activity System architecture Summary & ongoing work 18 October 2019
The notion of trails People leave trails by handling information. Trails constitute a specific path through a set of documents. perfectly laid out walk ways -> guided tour “beaten paths” -> trails Trails are built with information about users’ paths and activities. 18 October 2019
The notion of trails 18 October 2019
Application of trails Long established concept (see V.Bush) assisting users in searching and navigating hypertexts mechanism to find relevant information (documents) finding users with similar interests 18 October 2019
Existing systems Most existing systems offer some kind of history mode for recently accessed webpages ->not open with respect to other applications than browsers ->only one activity („accessed“) is supported 18 October 2019
Activity & trails Activity is an action performed on a document. Trails have an activity associated with the individual steps - named trailmarks - a user has taken. Management of trails over time by efficient filtering and retrieval using activities 18 October 2019
Openness & trails Trails can be generated by any application (openness) E-Mail client, word processor, ... Not just Web browsers Ask questions like: What documents did I print last week ? What messages did I post yesterday ? .... 18 October 2019
Definition of trails Trails are defined as vectors of trailmarks. A trailmark is defined as follows: trailmark = node activity date duration users‘s identity 18 October 2019
Architecture and implementation SoFAR (Southampton Framework for Agent Research) as implementation platform Individualizing agents for users Combining users to groups Highlevel framework Ontology for trails defined Acquisition and Storage Agents as main components 18 October 2019
Trailist architecture 18 October 2019
Summary Trails are an established approach to assist users in navigating hypertexts Activity associated with documents essential for trail-based systems Lack of openness of existing systems to other applications and their activities 18 October 2019
Ongoing Work Development of trail generating agents (e.g. Print manager, Mail manager) Development of trail processing agents Testing and evaluating of „Trailist“ by user groups 18 October 2019