LearnIR: WSDM 2018 Workshop on Learning from User Interactions

While users interact with online services(e.g. search engines, recommender systems, conversational agents), they leave behind fine grained traces of interaction patterns. The ability to understand user behavior, record and interpret user interaction signals, gauge user satisfaction and incorporate user feedback gives online systems a vast treasure trove of insights for improvement and experimentation. More generally, the ability to learn from user interactions promises pathways for solving a number of problems and improving user engagement and satisfaction.

Understanding and learning from user interactions involves a number of different aspects – from understanding user intent and tasks, to developing user models and personalization services. A user’s understanding of their need and the overall task develop as they interact with the system. Supporting the various stages of the task involves many aspects of the system, e.g. interface features, presentation of information, retrieving and ranking. Often, online systems are not specifically designed to support users in successfully accomplishing the tasks which motivated them to interact with the system in the first place. Beyond understanding user needs, learning from user interactions involves developing the right metrics and expiermentation systems, understanding user interaction processes, their usage context and designing interfaces capable of helping users.

Learning from user interactions becomes more important as new and novel ways of user interactions surface. There is a gradual shift towards searching and presenting the information in a conversational form. Chatbots, personal assistants in our phones and eyes-free devices are being used increasingly more for different purposes, including information retrieval and exploration. With improved speech recognition and information retrieval systems, more and more users are increasingly relying on such digital assistants to fulfill their information needs and complete their tasks. Such systems rely heavily on quickly learning from past interactions and incorporating implicit feedback signals into their models for rapid development.