Interfaces for Collaborative Exploratory Web Search: Motivations and Directions for Multi-User Designs

In this position paper, we examine exploratory Web search as a collaborative activity and propose that such collaborations are commonplace. We present survey results that support this claim, and argue that current search interfaces provide limited support for common collaboration needs. We identify four features of the exploratory search experience (coverage, confidence, exposure, and productivity) that could be enhanced by providing explicit support for collaboration during the search and subsequent sensemaking processes.