Building Information Interfaces
By Alan Halley
Every Web site presents a unique user interface to the information organized on the site. But if the information you want is distributed across multiple sites, it can be tedious to collect and assemble. A browser is no help when what you want is to pull together information from a variety of sources and provide it in a clear, consistent format. A solution I developed for a group of high-tech market researchers was to build an information interface into their regularly accessed data sources.
Problem
Market researchers can search for relevant documents at a number of sites produced by research analysts, most of which require authentication. A researcher typically wants to find the most significant information, but he or she also wants to conduct a thorough search of the site. Typically, a researcher has to go from one site to the next, refining search criteria along the way and entering a variety of possible search terms.
While search pages perform similar functions, they're all slightly different in format. Worse, the results of each search are formatted differently. While it's wonderful to have access to so many sources, the process of collecting this information is time-consuming and mind-numbing. Most researchers would like to be able to initiate a search from a single page, select which sites are to be included, and review the aggregated results.
Tool
The
