ReviewCollage: a mobile interface for direct comparison using online reviews

Abstract

Review comments posted in online websites can help the user decide a product to purchase or place to visit. They can also be useful to closely compare a couple of candidate entities. However, the user may have to read different webpages back and forth for comparison, and this is not desirable particularly when she is using a mobile device. We present ReviewCollage, a mobile interface that aggregates information about two reviewed entities in a one-page view. ReviewCollage uses attribute-value pairs, known to be effective for review text summarization, and highlights the similarities and differences between the entities. Our user study confirms that ReviewCollage can support the user to compare two entities and make a decision within a couple of minutes, at least as quickly as existing summarization interfaces. It also reveals that ReviewCollage could be most useful when two entities are very similar.