User Interface Considerations for Browser-Based Just-in-Time-Retrieval

With the availability of free online enrichment services injection of additional, external resources in existing Web content becomes more and more widespread. For the specific area of just-in-time retrieval of digital resources based on web page content, there are no specific guidelines of how to design and integrate the additional user interface components. In this paper, we conceptualise related user interface issues, investigating the central questions: (i) how can a user be visually notified that additional results are available, and (ii) with which user interface elements should the results be presented. Concretely, we identified four different notification styles and six different result presentation styles. In a survey-based study with 75 participants we elicited the users' preferences, revealing a clear preference for the representation style (split pane) and a strong preference for three notification styles (notification bubble, icon appearance and change of icon's appearance). The latter preferences are related to the preferred browser. The results can serve as guideline for designing web-based user interfaces for just-in-time retrieval.