Related papers: An Analysis of Mixed Initiative and Collaboration …
Conversational search is a relatively young area of research that aims at automating an information-seeking dialogue. In this paper we help to position it with respect to other research areas within conversational Artificial Intelligence…
Information seeking conversations between users and Conversational Search Agents (CSAs) consist of multiple turns of interaction. While users initiate a search session, ideally a CSA should sometimes take the lead in the conversation by…
How can we better understand the mechanisms behind multi-turn information seeking dialogues? How can we use these insights to design a dialogue system that does not require explicit query formulation upfront as in question answering? To…
Conversational interfaces that allow for intuitive and comprehensive access to digitally stored information remain an ambitious goal. In this thesis, we lay foundations for designing conversational search systems by analyzing the…
We deal with the scenario of conversational search, where user queries are under-specified or ambiguous. This calls for a mixed-initiative setup. User-asks (queries) and system-answers, as well as system-asks (clarification questions) and…
In an information-seeking conversation, a user may ask questions that are under-specified or unanswerable. An ideal agent would interact by initiating different response types according to the available knowledge sources. However, most…
Our research in this paper lies at the intersection of collaborative and conversational search. We report on a Wizard of Oz lab study in which 27 pairs of participants collaborated on search tasks over the Slack messaging platform. To…
Sharing ideas through communication with peers is the primary mode of human interaction. Consequently, extensive research has been conducted in the area of conversational AI, leading to an increase in the availability and diversity of…
Conversation is the natural mode for information exchange in daily life, a spoken conversational interaction for search input and output is a logical format for information seeking. However, the conceptualisation of user-system interactions…
Conversational search systems, such as Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana, enable users to interact with search systems in multiple rounds through natural language dialogues. Evaluating such systems is very challenging given that any…
Conversational assistants are being progressively adopted by the general population. However, they are not capable of handling complicated information-seeking tasks that involve multiple turns of information exchange. Due to the limited…
Recent research on conversational search highlights the importance of mixed-initiative in conversations. To enable mixed-initiative, the system should be able to ask clarifying questions to the user. However, the ability of the underlying…
Conversational search is based on a user-system cooperation with the objective to solve an information-seeking task. In this report, we discuss the implication of such cooperation with the learning perspective from both user and system…
Understanding and characterizing how people interact in information-seeking conversations is crucial in developing conversational search systems. In this paper, we introduce a new dataset designed for this purpose and use it to analyze…
The digital realm has witnessed the rise of various search modalities, among which the Image-Based Conversational Search System stands out. This research delves into the design, implementation, and evaluation of this specific system,…
Conversational search has evolved as a new information retrieval paradigm, marking a shift from traditional search systems towards interactive dialogues with intelligent search agents. This change especially affects exploratory…
Rather than using (proxies of) end user or expert judgment to decide on the ranking of information, this paper asks whether conversations about information quality might offer a feasible and valuable addition for ranking information. We…
The field of conversational information seeking, which is rapidly gaining interest in both academia and industry, is changing how we interact with search engines through natural language interactions. Existing datasets and methods are…
Conversation between two people is usually of mixed-initiative, with control over the conversation being transferred from one person to another. We apply a set of rules for the transfer of control to 4 sets of dialogues consisting of a…
Recommender systems are software applications that help users find items of interest in situations of information overload in a personalized way, using knowledge about the needs and preferences of individual users. In conversational…