Blending Queries and Conversations: Understanding Tactics, Trust, Verification, and System Choice in Web Search and Chat Interactions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mayerhofer, Kerstin, Capra, Rob, Elsweiler, David
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Mayerhofer, Kerstin
Capra, Rob
Elsweiler, David
author_facet Mayerhofer, Kerstin
Capra, Rob
Elsweiler, David
contents This paper presents a user study (N=22) where participants used an interface combining Web Search and a Generative AI-Chat feature to solve health-related information tasks. We study how people behaved with the interface, why they behaved in certain ways, and what the outcomes of these behaviours were. A think-aloud protocol captured their thought processes during searches. Our findings suggest that GenAI is neither a search panacea nor a major regression compared to standard Web Search interfaces. Qualitative and quantitative analyses identified 78 tactics across five categories and provided insight into how and why different interface features were used. We find evidence that pre-task confidence and trust both influenced which interface feature was used. In both systems, but particularly when using the chat feature, trust was often misplaced in favour of ease-of-use and seemingly perfect answers, leading to increased confidence post-search despite having incorrect results. We discuss what our findings mean in the context of our defined research questions and outline several open questions for future research.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2504_05156
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Blending Queries and Conversations: Understanding Tactics, Trust, Verification, and System Choice in Web Search and Chat Interactions
Mayerhofer, Kerstin
Capra, Rob
Elsweiler, David
Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
This paper presents a user study (N=22) where participants used an interface combining Web Search and a Generative AI-Chat feature to solve health-related information tasks. We study how people behaved with the interface, why they behaved in certain ways, and what the outcomes of these behaviours were. A think-aloud protocol captured their thought processes during searches. Our findings suggest that GenAI is neither a search panacea nor a major regression compared to standard Web Search interfaces. Qualitative and quantitative analyses identified 78 tactics across five categories and provided insight into how and why different interface features were used. We find evidence that pre-task confidence and trust both influenced which interface feature was used. In both systems, but particularly when using the chat feature, trust was often misplaced in favour of ease-of-use and seemingly perfect answers, leading to increased confidence post-search despite having incorrect results. We discuss what our findings mean in the context of our defined research questions and outline several open questions for future research.
title Blending Queries and Conversations: Understanding Tactics, Trust, Verification, and System Choice in Web Search and Chat Interactions
topic Human-Computer Interaction
Information Retrieval
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05156