Effects of Display Configurations on Document Triage

Abstract

Document triage is the practice of quickly determining the merit and disposition of relevant documents. This practice involves selection of documents from a document overview and quick forms of reading: skimming, reading short portions of a longer document, and navigating through headings, indices, and tables of contents. Earlier studies of document triage practice showed considerable overhead related to window management during transitions between the document overview and reading interfaces. This study examines the impact of multiple display configurations on document triage practice. In particular, it compares (1) configurations with same and different size displays, and (2) configurations with and without user control over which activity is performed on which display. Results show a significant increase in the number of transitions between activities when a multi-display configuration is introduced although there is no significant difference between the different multiple display configurations. Additionally, user activity with a document was positively correlated with an overall assessment of document value.

Investigating Document Triage on Paper and Electronic Media

“…Recent papers by Badi [1] and Bae [2], Wacholder [15] and others have pointed the way to a more detailed consideration of the interaction that occurs during document triage, in electronic and physical information media.…”

An Empirical Study of User Navigation during Document Triage

“…The current research into triage is fragmented, and this no doubt explains the lack of such a model. Available reports focus on very specific aspects or external aspects rather than document triage generally [1,2,3,5,18].…”

Supporting document triage via annotation‐based visualizations

“…This modeling can also be based on user behavior during document triage and on the types of external information structures that people build for information that is important to a task (e.g. categories and spatial structures) [2][19] [22].…”

“…For example the two media have different affordances: participants reported that annotation was easier on paper, for instance. Moreover, the affordances of tools used during triage (such as spatial hypertext [19] and display configuration [2]) can have an impact on the practice of triage.…”

“…In fact, as they skim early documents, they may well determine additional information needs that result in further queries and more documents to process [3]. We call this rapid assessment of documents based on their potential value information triage [19] or document triage [2].…”