In moving from factoid Question Answering (QA) to answering complex
questions, it has become apparent that insufficient attention has been
paid to the user's role in the process, other than as a source of one-shot
factual questions or a sequence of related questions. Rather, users both want to
and can do a lot more: With respect to answers, users can usually
disambiguate between a range of possible factoid answers and/or
navigate information clusters in an answer space; With respect to
the QA process, users want to ask more types of questions and respond
to the system's answer in more ways than another factual question.
In short, real users demand real-time interactive question and answer
capabilities, with coherent targeted answers presented in context for
easy inspection. Repeat users will require user models that treat
information already provided as background to novel information that
is now available.
Such developments move the paradigm of QA away from single question,
single answer modalities, toward interactive QA, where the system may
retain memory of the QA process, and where users develop their
understanding of a situation through an interactive QA dialogue. Dialogue
systems already allow users to interact with simple, structured data such
as train or flight timetables, using a dialogue component based on
variations of finite-state models. Such models make intensive use of the
structure of the domain to constrain the range of possible
interactions. To move forward, one needs the combined capabilities of dialogue
systems and open-domain QA systems.
The goal of this two day workshop is to explore the area of dialogue as applied to
the QA scenario, to extend current technology beyond factoid QA. We would
like the workshop to produce some tangible output, at the very least a
blueprint for the potential development of the field. Each of the keynote
speakers will add something to the discussion about the future direction (or past developments)
of interactive QA. During these presentations, and those of
the participants, notes will be taken about research priorities, existing
systems, methodologies and principles. At the end of the workshop, there
will be a discussion section to produce a roadmap for the future
development of interactive QA systems. This roadmap will be circulated to
participants after the event.
