Experiencesearching

Experiencesearching is a multidisciplinary concept in information retrieval and human-computer interaction that emphasizes the role of user experiences in guiding search processes. It treats search not merely as keyword matching but as a means to support task outcomes, satisfaction, and meaningful engagement with information.

Origins and scope: Experiencesearching draws on user experience research, cognitive psychology, context-aware computing, and usability studies. It aims to align search results with user goals, situational context, and emotional state, recognizing that different users may value different aspects of an answer beyond factual accuracy alone.

Methods and practice: Approaches include qualitative studies such as user interviews and journey mapping, as well as quantitative methods like experience-based task analysis, sentiment analysis, and experiments with experience-aware ranking models. Data sources may combine search logs, surveys, diaries, and direct feedback. Evaluation in experiencesearching often pairs traditional relevance metrics with measures of user satisfaction, task success, and long-term engagement.

Applications: In consumer search and e-commerce, experiencesearching can tailor results to a user’s current task and preferred interaction style. In enterprise knowledge management, it supports contextual access to information. It also has potential in travel planning, healthcare information, and accessibility-focused search, where user experience and outcomes are central to perceived usefulness.

Challenges: Key issues include privacy and consent for experiential data, variability of individual experiences, and difficulty in defining and measuring experiential relevance. Balancing speed and precision with richer, experience-oriented signals can also complicate system design and evaluation.

Related areas include experiential computing, user experience design, information retrieval, and recommender systems.