When search results against digital libraries and web resources have limited metadata, augmenting them with meaningful and stable category information can enable better overviews and support user exploration. This paper proposes six "fast-feature" techniques that use only features available in the search result list, such as title, snippet, and URL, to categorize results into meaningful categories. They use credible knowledge resources, including a US government organizational hierarchy, a thematic hierarchy from the Open Directory Project (ODP) web directory, and personal browse histories, to add valuable metadata to search results. In three tests the percent of results categorized for five representative queries was high enough to suggest practical benefits: general web search (76-90%), government web search (39-100%), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics website (48-94%). An additional test submitted 250 TREC queries to a search engine and successfully categorized 66% of the top 100 using the ODP and 61% of the top 350. Fast-feature techniques have been implemented in a prototype search engine. We propose research directions to improve categorization rates and make suggestions about how web site designers could re-organize their sites to support fast categorization of search results.

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Searching photo libraries can be made more satisfying and successful if search results are presented in a way that allows users to gain an overview of the photo categories. Since photo layouts on computer displays are the primary way that users get an overview, we propose a novel approach to show more photos in meaningful groupings. Photo layouts can be linear strips, or zoomable three dimensional arrangements, but the most common form is the two-dimensional grid. This paper introduces a novel bi-level hierarchical layout with motivating examples. In a bilevel hierarchy, one region is designated for primary content -an image, text, or combination. Adjacent to that region, groups of photos are placed radially in an ordered fashion, such that the relationship of the single primary region to its many secondary regions is apparent. A compelling aspect is the interactive experience in which the layout is dynamically resized, allowing users to rapidly, incrementally, and reversibly alter the dimensions and content. It can accommodate hundreds of photos in dozens of regions, can be customized in a corner or center layout, and can scale from an element on a web page to a large poster size. On typical displays (1024 x 1280 or 1200 x 1600 pixels), bi-level radial quantum layouts can conveniently accommodate 2-20 regions with tens or hundreds of photos per region.