Collective Information Seeking: Supporting Search with Low-Cost Activity Sharing and Collaboration

When searching for information, people often seek help from others. However, while people can benefit from communicating with others, they can usually satisfy their information needs, to some degree, without help. Because establishing explicit collaborations is often seen as onerous, there are many missed opportunities where shared experiences could save time and effort. In this work, we propose Collective Information Seeking, which integrates theory of group work with previous research in Social Navigation and Collaborative Information Seeking. We propose that by sharing and visualizing activities within groups of information seekers a low-cost form of collaboration is made possible. Shared activities provide both a form of implicit communication that can provide guidance, and provide cues and context facilitating entry into direct collaboration at a later time.