Cognika XI™
View Demonstration of Cognika Extensible Interface (XI)
The “search-and-click” paradigm has become the principal mode of information retrieval over the web. Search, while making information available, is far from making it usable. The goal of zooming user interfaces (ZUIs) is to make this information-glut usable as “knowledge” in a simple intuitive fashion. One of the simplest and most intuitive user interface paradigms in existence is that of exploring a map by zooming in/out for details/abstract. Cognika’s eXtensible Interface (XI™) platform offers the user a mechanism to iteratively access and develop a personalized compendium of the information desired. This customizable compendium—which Cognika terms a “View”—spans multiple domains, documents and media and self-assembles information contextually with which the user can iterate.
We illustrate this using an example of searching for a movie. As with most search engines the results are rendered with an initial summary. However, the user can then click on a result of interest to zoom-in further to view showtimes (based on location) and reviews (from selected sources). On zooming-in further, traffic or public transit information relevant to the closest theater is displayed. The user might then choose to include other facets such as tickets, nearby dining etc. Cognika XI™ also allows for inline expansion of concepts of interest. For example the user might choose to zoom-in further to learn about movies in similar genre by the director, or expand on the plot summary to learn about the context and story.
Cognika XI™ offers a novel, intuitive mechanism for Human Computer Interaction, especially in information-rich environments.
The market adoption of mobile phones and PDAs has skyrocketed in recent years to over 200 million users in the US alone. This development has brought with it a new set of unique technology requirements relating to mobile usability, search functionality and device size.
- People using mobile devices are on-the-run and cannot safely type lengthy keywords, so search technology must accurately predict or “anticipate” answers based on a few keystrokes.
- To be truly effective, mobile search technology must be contextual, sensing who the user is and where they are located currently.
- Mobile search information must be extremely concise because it has to fit on a tiny mobile phone or PDA screen.
Traditional search engines are simply not designed to meet these requirements. In fact, the explosive growth of the mobile market has imposed a new paradigm on search technologies.
Cognika Solution
Cognika’s predictive contextual search technology has been developed specifically to meet the demands of today’s mobile users and devices. When powered by Cognika ESP, mobile devices effectively enable users to:
- Keep typing to a bare minimum, by anticipating what the user is likely looking for based on a number of defined covariates such as date, time, weather, location and historical use behavior
- Extract the most relevant, concise information from different sources (like yellow pages, directories, review sites and blogs) for use as mobile input
- Summarize the answer using text gists — heat maps showing sentiment analysis and trend graphs to accommodate the most meaningful yet concise information in the small viewing area of mobile devices
Using Cognika’s powerful search functionality, the information is localized, personalized and physically minimized to suit the specific requirements of mobile phones and PDAs. Or put another way, the information is not too big, and not too small — it’s just right.
Cognika ESP — Mobile Edition is ideally suited for local search in the geographic area of a mobile phone or in a local data base of a large corporation, providing access to the most relevant answer, document or summary of information in response to a query with minimum typing and in the most concise form.