Sinch : searching intelligently on a mobile device

Abstract

Sinch is an application that allows mobile device users to obtain answers to their questions without having to perform a web search in their mobile browser. Questions are answered by human beings using Mechanical Turk, an online labor market for simple human computation tasks. Workers on Mechanical Turk can search for answers using their desktop browsers, free from the numerous shortcomings of browsing the internet on a small mobile device while in a potentially distracting situation. Sinch contributes an URL-rewriting proxy browser that can be embedded in Mechanical Turk tasks to track browsing history, text selections, and other user events. It also introduces two ways to improve the credibility of human-generated answers: providing multiple answers to the same question and including a browsing history with each answer. The Sinch application also allows users to view answers in their original context on a web page, using a custom mobile browser to highlight the answer text on the web page and zoom into it. Evaluations demonstrate that Sinch is capable of delivering correct answers in a timely manner and investigate the effectiveness of providing multiple answers and a browsing history for each answer.