Design for Collaborative Information-Seeking: Understanding User Challenges and Deploying Collaborative Dynamic Queries

Although Collaborative Information-Seeking (CIS) is becoming prevalent as people engage in shared decision-making, interface components adopted in the most commonly used information seeking tools (e.g., search, filter, select, and sort) are designed for individual use. To deepen our understanding of (1) how such single-user designs affect people's consensus building processes in CIS and (2) how to devise an alternative design to improve current practices, we conducted two 4-week diary studies and observed how groups seek out places together. Our studies focus on social event coordination as a case where CIS is necessary and important. In Study 1, we examined the major challenges people encounter when performing CIS using their preferred tools. These challenges include difficulties in capturing mutual preferences, high communication cost, and disparity of work depending on a group member's perceived role as an organizer or invitee. We discovered that improving a group's shared understanding of the target information they seek (e.g., places, products) could potentially address the challenges. In Study 2, we designed, deployed, and evaluated ComeTogether, a novel system that supports a group's social event coordination. ComeTogether adopts Collaborative Dynamic Queries (C-DQ), an interface designed to allow a group to share their preferences regarding potential destinations. Study 2 results indicate that using C-DQ increased users' awareness of other group members' preferences in performing CIS, making their coordination more transparent, more inviting, and fairer than what their current practice allows. Meanwhile, ComeTogether improved communication efficiency of groups while presenting opportunities to learn about others and to discover new places. We provide implications for design that explain considerations for adopting C-DQ and identify future research directions.