III: Small: An Architecture and Platform for Frictionless Information Systems

该项目设计并实现了用于无摩擦信息系统的工具，这些工具支持人们在工作和日常生活中使用的应用程序，自动查找和呈现上下文相关，有用和有趣的信息。 为了在某一特定背景下与用户的信息需求相关，信息必须添加新的内容：它必须在某些方面与背景相似，但在某些其他方面不同。 该项目中使用的技术明确地和具体地搜索或过滤有趣的不同信息，以系统的方式反映与用户目标相关的信息属性。该项目开发有用的信息属性和相异性的维度，以及可以利用这些属性和维度来基于用户找到有用和相关信息的技术。的当前上下文。 在给定的上下文中，重要的特定维度将取决于用户、任务和领域。 为了解决这一变化，该项目的目标是一个通用的体系结构和一套工具和库，将支持快速开发的摩擦信息系统的广泛的应用程序设置。其结果预计将导致信息系统的开发，可以为人们提供的信息是上下文相关的，真正有趣的，和多样的，从而导致更广泛和更深入的理解。 研究结果将在学术场所传播，并通过项目网址（http：//infolab.northwestern.edu/）公开发布原型系统。该项目与教育活动结合得很好。相关引擎平台将用于高级本科生和研究生的课堂项目，其中一些系统可能针对教育环境。学生将参与开发测试原型的语料库，使用网络资源对原型进行非正式评估，并在研究，设计和实施以及验证方面获得宝贵的经验。

This project designs and implements tools for frictionless information systems that work behind the applications that people use in their work and everyday lives, automatically finding and presenting contextually relevant, useful, and interesting information. To be relevant to a user's information needs in a given context, information must add something new: it must be similar in certain respects to the context, but dissimilar in certain other respects. The technology utilized in this project explicitly and specifically searches or filters for interestingly different information, dissimilar in systematic ways that reflect information attributes relevant to a user's goals.The project develops useful information attributes and dimensions of dissimilarity as well as technologies that can utilize these attributes and dimensions to find useful and relevant information based on the user?s current context. The particular dimensions that matter in a given context will depend upon the user, task, and domain at hand. To address this variability, the project is aimed at a general architecture and a set of tools and libraries that will support the rapid development of frictionless information systems for a wide range of application settings.The results are expected to lead to development of information systems that can provide people with information that is contextually relevant, genuinely interesting, and diverse, resulting in broader and deeper understanding. The results will be disseminated in academic venues as well as through public release of prototype systems via the project Web site (http://infolab.northwestern.edu/). The project is well integrated with educational activities. Relevance Engine platform will be utilized in class projects for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, and some of these systems may be aimed at educational settings. Students will be involved in development of corpora for testing prototypes, informal assessment of prototypes using web resources, and gain valuable experience in research, design and implementation, and validation.