research-article

Supporting Complex Search Tasks

Authors:

Ahmed Hassan Awadallah,

Patrick Pantel,

Susan T. Dumais,

Yi-Min WangAuthors Info & Claims

CIKM '14: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management

Pages 829 - 838

https://doi.org/10.1145/2661829.2661912

Published: 03 November 2014 Publication History

Abstract

We present methods to automatically identify and recommend sub-tasks to help people explore and accomplish complex search tasks. Although Web searchers often exhibit directed search behaviors such as navigating to a particular Website or locating a particular item of information, many search scenarios involve more complex tasks such as learning about a new topic or planning a vacation. These tasks often involve multiple search queries and can span multiple sessions. Current search systems do not provide adequate support for tackling these tasks. Instead, they place most of the burden on the searcher for discovering which aspects of the task they should explore. Particularly challenging is the case when a searcher lacks the task knowledge necessary to decide which step to tackle next. In this paper, we propose methods to automatically mine search logs for tasks and build an association graph connecting multiple tasks together. We then leverage the task graph to assist new searchers in exploring new search topics or tackling multi-step search tasks. We demonstrate through experiments with human participants that we can discover related and interesting tasks to assist with complex search scenarios.

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Hoeber OStorie D(2024)Graduate student search strategies within academic digital librariesInternational Journal on Digital Libraries10.1007/s00799-023-00378-x25:2(303-316)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
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White R(2023)Tasks, Copilots, and the Future of Search: A Keynote at SIGIR 2023ACM SIGIR Forum10.1145/3642979.364298557:2(1-8)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
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Index Terms

Supporting Complex Search Tasks
1. Information systems
  1. Information retrieval

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cover image ACM Conferences

CIKM '14: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Conference on Information and Knowledge Management

November 2014

2152 pages

ISBN:9781450325981

DOI:10.1145/2661829

General Chairs:
Jianzhong Li
Harbin Inst. of Technology
,
X. Sean Wang
Fudan University
,
Program Chairs:
Minos Garofalakis
Technical University of Crete, Greece
,
Ian Soboroff
National Institute of Standards, USA
,
Torsten Suel
New York University, USA
,
Min Wang
Google Research, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Published: 03 November 2014

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CIKM '14 Paper Acceptance Rate 175 of 838 submissions, 21%;

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Cited By

Vuong TRuotsalo T(2024)Predicting Representations of Information Needs from Digital Activity ContextACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/363981942:4(1-29)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3639819
Hoeber OStorie D(2024)Graduate student search strategies within academic digital librariesInternational Journal on Digital Libraries10.1007/s00799-023-00378-x25:2(303-316)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00799-023-00378-x
White R(2023)Tasks, Copilots, and the Future of Search: A Keynote at SIGIR 2023ACM SIGIR Forum10.1145/3642979.364298557:2(1-8)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3642979.3642985
Sarkar SAmirizaniani MShah C(2023)Representing Tasks with a Graph-Based Method for Supporting Users in Complex Search TasksProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval10.1145/3576840.3578279(378-382)Online publication date: 19-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3576840.3578279
White RChen HDuh WHuang HKato MMothe JPoblete B(2023)Tasks, Copilots, and the Future of SearchProceedings of the 46th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval10.1145/3539618.3593069(5-6)Online publication date: 19-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3539618.3593069
Tian YZhou KPelleg D(2023)Characterization and Prediction of Mobile TasksACM Transactions on Information Systems10.1145/352271141:1(1-39)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3522711
Ambreen SRashid USaddal M(2023)An Architecture to Research Aggregated Vertical Web Search Results2023 25th International Multitopic Conference (INMIC)10.1109/INMIC60434.2023.10465931(1-4)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/INMIC60434.2023.10465931
Garigliotti DBalog KHose KBjerva J(2023)Recommending tasks based on search queries and missionsNatural Language Engineering10.1017/S1351324923000219(1-25)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1351324923000219
Wang BLiu J(2023)Characterizing and Early Predicting User Performance for Adaptive Search Path RecommendationProceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology10.1002/pra2.79960:1(408-420)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.799
Li PZhang BZhang Y(2022)Extracting Searching as Learning Tasks Based on IBRT ApproachApplied Sciences10.3390/app1212587912:12(5879)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2022
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