Flexible entity search on surfaces

Surface computing allows flexible search interaction where users can manipulate the representation of entities recommended for them to create new queries or augment existing queries by taking advantage of increased screen estate and almost physical tactile interaction. We demonstrate a search system based on 1) Direct Manipulation of Entity Representation on Surfaces and 2) Entity Recommendation and Document Retrieval. Entities are modeled as a knowledge-graph and the relevances of entities are computed using the graph structure. Users can manipulate the representation of entities via spatial grouping and assigning preferences on entities. Our contribution can help to design effective information exploration systems that take advantage of large surfaces.