Supporting Complex Information Needs via Large-Scale Collaborative Search

The need for exploration comes from users’ information needs that are highly complex: open-ended and multifaceted information needs that are derived from complex search tasks such as learning tasks. Researchers have shown that exploratory search can be better supported through explicit search collaborations. More importantly, previous research has suggested that leveraging collaborations of a large group of users may lead to an improved user experience. However, there is still a lack of evidence in support of this hypothesis as past studies were usually conducted in restricted environments (laboratory studies with small groups of participants and simulated work tasks). In this paper, we briefly discuss how we will shed light on this research field, and we present current work and future directions.