A proactive personalised retrieval system

Desmond Elliott, Joemon M. Jose

Abstract: We present a personalised retrieval system that captures explicit relevance feedback to build an evolving user profile with multiple aspects. The user profile is used to proactively retrieve results between search sessions to support multi-session search tasks. This approach to supporting users with their multi-session search tasks is evaluated in a between-subjects multiple time-series study with ten subjects performing two simulated work situation tasks over five sessions. System interaction data shows that subjects using the personalised retrieval system issue fewer queries and interact with fewer results than subjects using a baseline system. The interaction data also shows a trend of subjects interacting with the proactively retrieved results in the personalised retrieval system.