For open-ended information tasks, users must determine how to best use their time in sifting through many potentially relevant documents. Document triage is the process of rapidly assessing the potential value of documents with respect to the task at hand. Normally, people perform triage using multiple applications in concert: a search engine interface presents lists of potentially relevant documents; a document reader displays their contents; and a third tool-a text editor or a more specialized application-is used to record notes and assessments. To support document triage, we have developed a multi-application environment that combines an information workspace with a modified document reader. This environment infers users' interests based on their interactions with both applications, coupled with an analysis of the characteristics and content of the documents they are interacting with. It then uses this interest profile to generate visualizations that bring users' attention to documents or parts of documents that match those inferred interests.
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