Quill: a narrative-based interface for personal document retrieval

The ways to manage and retrieve documents have changed little in recent years. Browsing is increasingly unpractical and search still is fairly simple, relying mostly on keywords. The wide range of autobiographic information that users remember about their documents cannot be used. We present a new interaction paradigm, narrative-based interfaces, especially well suited for document retrieval. Stories make remembering information easier since it appears contextualized in a coherent whole. We describe the Quill system, a narrative-based query-formulation interface for personal document retrieval, explaining the user studies and results that led to its design in a sound and effective way. Its evaluation confirms that stories can be told naturally, containing the desired information about documents.