TY - JOUR

T1 - Spoken conversational context improves query auto-completion in web search

AU - Vuong, Tung

AU - Andolina, Salvatore

AU - Jacucci, Giulio

AU - Ruotsalo, Tuukka

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery.

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Web searches often originate from conversations in which people engage before they perform a search. Therefore, conversations can be a valuable source of context with which to support the search process. We investigate whether spoken input from conversations can be used as a context to improve query auto-completion. We model the temporal dynamics of the spoken conversational context preceding queries and use these models to re-rank the query auto-completion suggestions. Data were collected from a controlled experiment and comprised conversations among 12 participant pairs conversing about movies or traveling. Search query logs during the conversations were recorded and temporally associated with the conversations. We compared the effects of spoken conversational input in four conditions: a control condition without contextualization; an experimental condition with the model using search query logs; an experimental condition with the model using spoken conversational input; and an experimental condition with the model using both search query logs and spoken conversational input. We show the advantage of combining the spoken conversational context with the Web-search context for improved retrieval performance. Our results suggest that spoken conversations provide a rich context for supporting information searches beyond current user-modeling approaches.

AB - Web searches often originate from conversations in which people engage before they perform a search. Therefore, conversations can be a valuable source of context with which to support the search process. We investigate whether spoken input from conversations can be used as a context to improve query auto-completion. We model the temporal dynamics of the spoken conversational context preceding queries and use these models to re-rank the query auto-completion suggestions. Data were collected from a controlled experiment and comprised conversations among 12 participant pairs conversing about movies or traveling. Search query logs during the conversations were recorded and temporally associated with the conversations. We compared the effects of spoken conversational input in four conditions: a control condition without contextualization; an experimental condition with the model using search query logs; an experimental condition with the model using spoken conversational input; and an experimental condition with the model using both search query logs and spoken conversational input. We show the advantage of combining the spoken conversational context with the Web-search context for improved retrieval performance. Our results suggest that spoken conversations provide a rich context for supporting information searches beyond current user-modeling approaches.

KW - Background speech

KW - QAC

KW - Query auto-completion

KW - Speech input

KW - Voice

U2 - 10.1145/3447875

DO - 10.1145/3447875

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85111093697

VL - 39

JO - ACM Transactions on Information Systems

JF - ACM Transactions on Information Systems

SN - 1046-8188

IS - 3

M1 - 31

ER -