Exploratory Search - History

History

Exploratory search is a topic that has grown from the fields of information retrieval and information seeking but has become more concerned with alternatives to the kind of search that has received the majority of focus (returning the most relevant documents to a Google-like keyword search). The research is motivated by questions like "what if the user doesn't know which keywords to use?" or "what if the user isn't looking for a single answer?" Consequently, research has begin to focus on defining the broader set of information behaviors in order to learn about the situations when a user is, or feels, limited by only having the ability to perform a keyword search.

In the last few years, a series of workshops have been held at various related and key events. In 2005, the Exploratory Search Interfaces workshop focused on beginning to define some of the key challenges in the field. Since then a series of other workshops have been held at related conferences: Evaluating Exploratory Search at SIGIR06 and Exploratory Search and HCI at CHI07 (in order to meet with the experts in human–computer interaction).

In March 2008, an Information Processing and Management special issue has focused particularly on the challenges of evaluating exploratory search, given the reduced assumptions that can be made about scenarios of use.

In June 2008, the National Science Foundation sponsored an invitational workshop to identify a research agenda for exploratory search and similar fields for the coming years.