A methodology for simulated experiments in interactive search

Nanas, Nikolaos; Kruschwitz, Udo; Albakour, M-Dyaa; Fasli, Maria; Song, Dawei; Kim, Yunhyong; Cerviño, Ulises and De Roeck, Anne (2010). A methodology for simulated experiments in interactive search. In: ACM SIGIR2010 Workshop on Simulation of Interaction (SemInt), 19-23 Jul 2010, Geneva, Switzerland.

URL: http://ir.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~leif/papers/simint10proce...

Abstract

Interactive information retrieval has received much attention in recent years, e.g. [7]. Furthermore, increased activity in developing interactive features in search systems used across existing popular Web search engines suggests that interactive systems are being recognised as a promising next step in assisting information search. One of the most challenging problems with interactive systems however remains evaluation.

We describe the general specifications of a methodology for conducting controlled and reproducible experiments in the context of interactive search. It was developed in the AutoAdapt project1 focusing on search in intranets, but the methodology is more generic than that and can be applied to interactive Web search as well. The goal of this methodology is to evaluate the ability of different algorithms to produce domain models that provide accurate suggestions for query modifications. The AutoAdapt project investigates the application of automatically constructed adaptive domain models for providing suggestions for query modifications to the users of an intranet search engine. This goes beyond static models such as the one employed to guide users who search the Web site of the University of Essex which is based on a domain model that has been built in advance using the documents’ markup structure.

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