Researchers need to keep up with immense literatures, though it is time-consuming and difficult to do so. In this paper, we investigate the role that intelligent interfaces can play in helping researchers skim papers, that is, rapidly reviewing a paper to attain a cursory understanding of its contents. After conducting formative interviews and a design probe, we suggest that skimming aids should aim to thread the needle of highlighting content that is simultaneously diverse, evenly-distributed, and important. We introduce Scim, a novel intelligent skimming interface that reifies this aim, designed to support the skimming process by highlighting salient paper contents to direct a skimmer's focus. Key to the design is that the highlights are faceted by content type, evenly-distributed across a paper, with a density configurable by readers at both the global and local level. We evaluate Scim with an in-lab usability study and deployment study, revealing how skimming aids can support readers throughout the skimming experience and yielding design considerations and tensions for the design of future intelligent skimming tools.

翻译：研究者需要持续跟踪海量文献，但这既耗时又困难。本文探讨了智能界面如何帮助研究者进行论文跳读——即快速浏览论文以获取对其内容的初步理解。通过形成性访谈和设计探针，我们提出跳读辅助工具应着力实现一种平衡：在突出重点内容的同时，确保其多样性、分布均匀性和重要性。我们提出Scim这一新型智能跳读界面，通过高亮论文关键内容来引导读者焦点，从而具象化上述目标。该设计的核心在于：高亮内容按类型分面呈现、在论文中均匀分布，且读者可在全局和局部层面灵活配置高亮密度。通过实验室可用性研究和实际部署研究，我们评估了Scim的效果，揭示了跳读辅助工具如何全方位支持读者的跳读体验，并为未来智能跳读工具的设计提出了关键考量与设计张力。