# Wigglite: Low-cost Information Collection and Triage

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.00496 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00496/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 31 Jul 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Graphologue: Exploring Large Language Model Responses with Interactive Diagrams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11473/) (2023)
- [Selenite: Scaffolding Online Sensemaking with Comprehensive Overviews Elicited from Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02161/) (2023)
- [The Semantic Reader Project: Augmenting Scholarly Documents through AI-Powered Interactive Reading Interfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14334/) (2023)
- [Orca: Browsing at Scale Through User-Driven and AI-Facilitated Orchestration Across Malleable Webpages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22831/) (2025)
- [Intelligent Interaction Techniques (IIxT) - Proposal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.16295/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Consumers conducting comparison shopping, researchers making sense of competitive space, and developers looking for code snippets online all face the challenge of capturing the information they find for later use without interrupting their current flow. In addition, during many learning and exploration tasks, people need to externalize their mental context, such as estimating how urgent a topic is to follow up on, or rating a piece of evidence as a "pro" or "con," which helps scaffold subsequent deeper exploration. However, current approaches incur a high cost, often requiring users to select, copy, context switch, paste, and annotate information in a separate document without offering specific affordances that capture their mental context. In this work, we explore a new interaction technique called "wiggling," which can be used to fluidly collect, organize, and rate information during early sensemaking stages with a single gesture. Wiggling involves rapid back-and-forth movements of a pointer or up-and-down scrolling on a smartphone, which can indicate the information to be collected and its valence, using a single, light-weight gesture that does not interfere with other interactions that are already available. Through implementation and user evaluation, we found that wiggling helped participants accurately collect information and encode their mental context with a 58% reduction in operational cost while being 24% faster compared to a common baseline.