A click-search interface for web browsing using cellular phones

Cellular phones are widely used to access the Web, and it has become common to search for information on the Web using cellular phones. However, since cellular phones only have numerical keys for inputting characters, users have to conduct laborious operations to input a keyword for Web search. In our previous work, we assumed information appliances equipped with pointing devices and proposed a Click-Search method that enables users to perform a keyword search simply by pointing and clicking the target word on a Web page. This approach might be effective for Web searches using cellular phones. However, since many cellular phones only have a, direction pad as a pointing device, users still have to conduct laborious operations using the pad to move a pointer and point to a word. To solve this problem, we propose a Click-Search interface for cellular phone users that uses an expanding circle to select a word for search. Using this interface, users can specify a keyword simply by pushing a few button.