Towards an Understanding of Transactional Tasks

Understanding search behavior in the context of the larger work task is of key importance in order to build search systems that can assist users in achieving work task completion. This study explores a particular type of task, transactional, that has not received due attention in the literature so far. A total of 38 users were observed in a laboratory experiment where they completed tasks at different complexity and difficulty levels. We perform both qualitative and quantitative analysis of users’ perception of task difficulty and search engine support. Further, we identify two main search strategies that people employ when completing transactional tasks.