Cognitive search intents hidden behind queries: a user study on query formulations

Makoto P. Kato, Takehiro Yamamoto, Hiroaki Ohshima, Katsumi Tanaka

Abstract: This study investigated query formulations by users with Cognitive Search Intents (CSI), which are needs for the cognitive characteristics of documents to be retrieved, eg. comprehensibility, subjectivity, and concreteness. We proposed an example-based method of specifying search intents to observe unbiased query formulations. Our user study revealed that about half our subjects did not input any keywords representing CSIs, even though they were conscious of given CSIs.