Abstract: A user-interactive method for use in a processor-controlled machine provides a user with the capability to establish associations among image segments in a data structure that indicate visually-displayed but otherwise not recognized or interpreted information, for the purpose of retrieving the unrecognized data from the data structure without performing a recognition operation. A user selects and designates a visually recognizable, but computationally unrecognized, displayed image segment as a coherent display object, called a key object, to function as an indexing mechanism. The user then associates the key object with data objects, which may also be computationally unrecognized, that are stored in a target data structure. The key object can be used as an access mechanism to retrieve the target data without recognition of either the key object or the target data.