Here and Now: Reality-Based Information Retrieval

Today, the widespread use of mobile devices allows users to search information "on the go", whenever and wherever they want, no longer confining Information Retrieval to classic desktop interfaces. We believe that technical advances in Augmented Reality will allow Information Retrieval to go even further, making use of both the users' surroundings and their abilities to interact with the physical world. In this paper, we present the fundamental concept of Reality-Based Information Retrieval, which combines the classic Information Retrieval process with Augmented Reality technologies to provide context-dependent search cues and situated visualizations of the query and the results. With information needs often stemming from real-world experiences, this novel combination has the potential to better support both Just-in-time Information Retrieval and serendipity. Based on extensive literature research, we propose a conceptual framework for Reality-Based Information Retrieval. We illustrate and discuss this framework and present two prototypical implementations, which we tested in small user studies. They demonstrate the feasibility of our concepts and inspired our discussion of notable challenges for further research in this novel and promising area.