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Characterizing stages of a multi-session complex search task through direct and indirect query modifications

Published: 28 July 2013 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Search systems use context to effectively satisfy a user's information need as expressed by a query. Tasks are important factors in determining user context during search and many studies have been conducted that identify tasks and task stages through users' interaction behavior with search systems. The type of interaction available to users, however, depends on the type of search interface features available. Queries are the most pervasive input from users to express their information need regardless of the input method, e.g., typing keywords or clicking facets. Instead of characterizing interaction behavior in terms of interface specific components, we propose to characterize users' search behavior in terms of two types of query modification: (i) direct modification, which refers to reformulations of queries; and (ii) indirect modification, which refers to user operations on additional input components provided by various search interfaces. We investigate the utility of characterizing task stages through direct and indirect query reformulations in a case study and find that it is possible to effectively differentiate subsequent stages of the search task. We found that describing user interaction behavior in such a generic form allowed us to relate user actions to search task stages independent from the specific search interface deployed. The next step will then be to validate this idea in a setting with a wider palette of search tasks and tools.

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2021)Deconstructing search tasks in interactive information retrievalInformation Processing and Management: an International Journal10.1016/j.ipm.2021.10252258:3Online publication date: 1-May-2021
    • (2020)Interactive faceted query suggestion for exploratory searchJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2430471:7(742-756)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2020
    • (2019)First International Workshop on Professional SearchACM SIGIR Forum10.1145/3308774.330879952:2(153-162)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2019
    • Show More Cited By

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    1. Characterizing stages of a multi-session complex search task through direct and indirect query modifications

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        SIGIR '13: Proceedings of the 36th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval
        July 2013
        1188 pages
        ISBN:9781450320344
        DOI:10.1145/2484028
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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        Publication History

        Published: 28 July 2013

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        Author Tags

        1. query modification
        2. user interaction

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        SIGIR '13 Paper Acceptance Rate 73 of 366 submissions, 20%;
        Overall Acceptance Rate 792 of 3,983 submissions, 20%

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        Cited By

        View all
        • (2021)Deconstructing search tasks in interactive information retrievalInformation Processing and Management: an International Journal10.1016/j.ipm.2021.10252258:3Online publication date: 1-May-2021
        • (2020)Interactive faceted query suggestion for exploratory searchJournal of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/asi.2430471:7(742-756)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2020
        • (2019)First International Workshop on Professional SearchACM SIGIR Forum10.1145/3308774.330879952:2(153-162)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2019
        • (2018)First International Workshop on Professional Search (ProfS2018)The 41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval10.1145/3209978.3210198(1431-1434)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2018
        • (2018)Personalizing Query Auto-Completion for Multi-Session Tasks2018 IEEE International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering Technology (CCET)10.1109/CCET.2018.8542201(203-207)Online publication date: Aug-2018
        • (2017)User Behaviour and Task CharacteristicsProceedings of the 2017 Conference on Conference Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3020165.3020188(67-76)Online publication date: 7-Mar-2017
        • (2014)Understanding Intrinsic Diversity in Web SearchACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/262955332:4(1-45)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2014
        • (2013)Aggregated search interface preferences in multi-session search tasksProceedings of the 36th international ACM SIGIR conference on Research and development in information retrieval10.1145/2484028.2484050(123-132)Online publication date: 28-Jul-2013

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