At the Right Time: when to sort web history and bookmarks

In open-ended interviews web users preferred text interfaces for sorting bookmarks to more complex graphical 2D and 3D interfaces. They also expressed a desire to sort web pages as they bookmarked them. However, in an experimental study we found that recall performance of web pages sorted during browsing was significantly poorer than performance when they sorted bookmarked pages at the end of a browsing session. This effect appeared to decay in a retest a week later. This work shows that users are able to articulate meta-knowledge strategy, but it questions whether users’ expressed preferences are a good guide for design.