It’s often said that search is a conversation: a dialog between two participants that can be every bit as rich as human conversation. On one side is the user, with an information need articulated in the form of a query, and on the other side is the system, with its response in the form of a set of search results. Like human conversation, the outcome relies on a shared understanding of intent and context. Together, these elements form a crucial part of the search experience, guiding and shaping the dialog in productive directions.
But the conversational metaphor can only take us so far. There are levels of nuance to the linguistic interaction between human beings that go beyond simple bidirectional exchanges, and likewise, there are patterns and sequences of human information seeking behavior that transcend the conversational metaphor. At this level, we need to take a more holistic approach, and view search from the perspective of stages in an information journey. In this post, we consider one such model of the information journey that is valuable for both its simplicity and utility.