From Search Engines to Augmented Search Services: An End-User Development Approach

The World Wide Web is a vast and continuously changing source of information where searching is a frequent, and sometimes critical, user task. Searching is not always the user’s primary goal but an ancillary task that is performed to find complementary information allowing to complete another task. In this paper, we explore primary and/or ancillary search tasks and propose an approach for simplifying the user interaction during search tasks. Rather than focusing on dedicated search engines, our approach allows the user to abstract search engines already provided by Web applications into pervasive search services that will be available for performing searches from any other Web site. We also propose allowing users to manage the way in which the search results are presented and some possible interactions. In order to illustrate the feasibility of this approach, we have built a support tool based on a plug-in architecture that allows users to integrate new search services (created by themselves by means of visual tools) and execute them in the context of both kinds of searches. A case study illustrates the use of such tool. We also present the results of two evaluations that demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and the benefits in its use.