Does conversation lead to better searches? Investigating single-shot and multi-turn spoken searches with children
Thomas Beelen, Roeland Ordelman, Khiet P. Truong, Vanessa Evers, Theo W. C. Huibers · International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction · 2024
Interactive speech technologies such as Siri and Amazon Echo allow people to search for information via speech. These systems generally take a single statement as input, which may not be enough to fully understand the user's need. More interactive, multi-turn conversations, have been proposed to establish more details of users' information needs. A conversational approach can particularly benefit non-standard audiences, such as children who require more support when formulating queries. We set up a study with 32 children comparing multi-turn conversations with single-shot (or Query-Response) interactions. We looked at the search need descriptions in both conditions and children's experiences while searching. Additionally, we derived design guidelines for conversational agents for children's information searching. Findings indicate that more elaborate descriptions of children’s information needs (more keywords) were gathered by the conversational interaction, leading to more focused search results compared with the Query-Response interaction. Further analysis of children’s responses yielded insights into their preferences for conversing with speech-based interfaces.