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Information Overload in Information Seeking with Conversational Agents : A Survey and Design Considerations
Compensis, Paul (2026): Information Overload in Information Seeking with Conversational Agents : A Survey and Design Considerations, in: Chirag Shah, Ryen W. White, Adam Fourney, u. a. (Hrsg.), Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, New York, NY: ACM, S. 474–479, doi: 10.1145/3786304.3787886.
Faculty/Chair:
Author:
Title of the compilation:
Proceedings of the 2026 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval
Editors:
Shah, Chirag
White, Ryen W.
Fourney, Adam
Teixeira Lopes, Carla
Trippas, Johanne
Conference:
CHIIR '26: 2026 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, March 22 - 26, 2026 ; Seattle, USA
Publisher Information:
Year of publication:
2026
Pages:
ISBN:
979-8-4007-2414-5
Language:
English
Abstract:
Conversational agents and related systems enable more flexible and elaborate information seeking and retrieval than earlier search strategies, such as conventional web search engines. However, these systems sometimes produce responses that are excessively long or complex, not always aligning with the needs of their human interaction partners and potentially leading to information overload (IO). IO is associated with negative affect in humans and is known to reduce information effectiveness, thereby limiting the usability of information-seeking systems. In this paper, I briefly discuss psychological effects of IO and present the results of a survey examining self-reported experiences of IO when using conversational agents for information seeking in a German sample (n = 50). The paper concludes with suggestions for how conversational agents could be adapted and modified to become more sensitive to humans’ affective experiences, with the goal of mitigating the effects of IO.
Keywords: ;  ;  ;  ; 
conversational information seeking
information overload
humanagent interaction
conversational agent
afect
Type:
Conferenceobject
Activation date:
April 30, 2026
Project(s):
Versioning
Question on publication
Permalink
https://fis.uni-bamberg.de/handle/uniba/114902