Benefits of Subjunctive Interface Support for Exploratory Access to Online Resources

When exploring online resources, users often make many separate retrievals – specifying in turn various parameter values to make up a request, and examining the corresponding results. Any interface that supports only one retrieval at a time, i.e., one set of parameter values and the corresponding results, places a heavy burden on a user who wants to compare available results, or simply to try a range of retrievals. A subjunctive-interface approach may reduce this burden. Subjunctive interfaces support the setting up, viewing and adjustment of multiple scenarios in parallel, leading to more efficient iteration through related scenarios, and the opportunity for side-by-side instead of temporally separated viewing. We examine how these facilities can be applied in a range of information-access applications, and the benefits that can be obtained.