Looking for Non-existent Information: A Consumer-led Interactive Search Approach

Exponential growth of user-generated content (UGC) on the Web demands an effective way for information consumers to acquire what they need. Specialized UGC search services outperform general-purpose search engines that usually have difficulties retrieving UGC or rank them low. However, with existing UGC search services, consumers may only be able to acquire information that is related to their needs rather than the exact information what they want. In this paper, we present a novel consumer-led interactive search approach that can help consumers acquire the information they exactly want through a consumer-led interactive search process where invited information providers jointly create such information on the fly. This approach has been implemented in a prototype system, which uses an epistemology structure to represent a consumer's information needs and lead an interactive search process. Preliminary user feedback has shown that this approach is particularly effective for a consumer to acquire a structured knowledge unit consisting of diverse but coherent information.