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object he/ she would like to return to, scanning records of information seeking and recognition
of key properties of information objects could be a better strategy than a querying strategy. As
the opposite, if the user remembers some of the key properties of the information object he/ she
would like to return to, he/ she can directly query against his/ her personal information space.
The query can be as simple as words or phrases.
Generally speaking, there are three types of information seeking history for historical
navigation, depending on what decision the user made on the information object visited. The
user could have simply visited the information object without any saving or indexing operation.
The user could also decide to save the information object with the "saving without indexing"
function, postponing the assignment of indexing terms to the information object while preserving
the information object that has the potential relevance. Finally, the user could index the
information object with the Personalized Indexing function so that he/ she can return to the
information object by selecting the terms he/ she attributes to the relationship between the
information problem and that information object. When the user wants to locate a certain
information object, he/ she should be able to choose a particular type of information seeking
history or switch smoothly among types of information seeking history. Taking this into
consideration, Interaction Recorder can enhance its historical navigation function in terms of
efficiency and usability. For example, by choosing a particular type of information seeking
history to locate a visited information object, the user can have a shorter list of information
objects to browse or search for and thus can locate the information more easily or quickly.
As far as the interface real estate is concerned, the motivation and frequency of using
Interaction Recorder can help determine the layout of the interface. Since the user uses