The ResultsSpace collaborative search environment

The ResultsSpace Collaborative Search Environment is a tool to support asynchronous collaborative information retrieval among a small group of collaborators. It is designed to promote awareness of collaborators' searches and the documents they have rated. Awareness is supported through several mechanisms: an area that shows a history of queries, a summary display of collaborators' ratings next to each search result, and changes in the visual salience of search results based on their aggregate rating from all collaborators. Faceted controls allow users to filter results based on specific ratings (relevant, not relevant, and maybe) and on specific collaborator(s) who have rated an item. We describe features of the system, how they are implemented, and give insights into the design rationale.