Garden of Papers: Finding, Reading, and Organizing Research Papers in a Visual, Integrated, and Flexible Workspace

DOI

Writing a research paper requires significant time and effort to find, read, and organize many related papers, which are complex knowledge tasks. We present a novel interactive system that allows users to perform these tasks quickly and easily on a 2D canvas. Our system interprets users’ simple sketches to infer their intent and transforms them into node-link diagrams that support instantly finding, reading, and organizing related papers. Users can intuitively create paper nodes and citation links, accumulate thoughts onto these diagrams, and flexibly expand and restructure them, progressively cultivating their personalized landscape of related papers. We first conducted a short-term lab study (N = 4, 1 week) using a proof-of-concept system. Based on insights from this study, we refined the system and conducted a long-term, in-the-wild study (N = 12, 4 weeks). Through these studies, we qualitatively and quantitatively demonstrated that our system effectively supports real-world literature review processes through nine interaction patterns by providing a visual, integrated, and flexible workspace. By describing these patterns through the metaphor of a “Garden of Papers,” we propose design guidelines for future literature review tools.