The impact of automated assistance on the information retrieval process

Advanced information retrieval systems providing automated assistance offer the opportunity to greatly enhance the effectiveness of the information retrieval process. One issue in designing such systems is determining the effect that the automated assistance has on the tasks and sequence of tasks within this process. Using verbal protocol data and transaction log analysis, we present a taxonomy of tasks when utilizing information retrieval systems with automated assistance, along with a temporal analysis of when interaction with the automated assistance occurs. Results indicate that there is a predictable pattern of user interaction with automated assistance with implications for the design of information retrieval systems.