"Webscraps" -- A Tool to Manage Web Information Gathering Tasks

Abstract

Online tasks that involve information gathering, those ranging from academic research to vacation planning, often present challenges to users such as information management, clutter and information overload. Studies have shown that users who return to online tasks after an absence have difficulty remembering why particular websites they had saved were useful. This work presents "Webscraps", an innovative web browser extension for Mozilla Firefox, designed to improve information gathering on the Web. Participants in a 30-person user study, significantly preferred Webscraps over webpage "thumbnails" for information gathering tasks that involved comparing information from different websites and remembering important text.