Szymon Kaliski

Browsing vs Searching

The literature on browsing develops a portrait of a complex, open-ended, embodied human experience, rather than the input-output exchange that characterises traditional information retrieval.

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Browsing is an iterative process that entails scanning or glimpsing a field of potential resources, and selecting or sampling items for further investigation and evaluation.

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Browsing entails movement through a field of resources; Kwasnik stipulates "movement in a connected space". This movement depends in turn on orientation: a knowledge of the "structure and content" of the browsing field

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We may browse with or without a goal in mind, and goals may change as the process unfolds.

— Generous Interfaces for Digital Cultural Collections ↗

• touching on Embodied Cognition is interesting, browsing happens with the body, in a space
• browsing is open-ended compared to information retrieval

(source: "The design of browsing and berrypicking techniques for the online search interface")

Backlinks

1. 2022-01-03A Dog, Short Ramble on "Programming", MIDI→CV, and a Rabbit-Holing Web Browser¹
2. 2021-12-22Cartographist — Web Browser Optimized for Rabbit-Holing¹
3. 2021-09-27New Home, New Music and Collection Browsing¹
4. 2021-02-10Links¹
5. 2020-12-21Handling History in Software¹
6. 2020-12-21Dialog in UI¹
7. 2020-12-21Rules for Visual Information Systems¹