  How can we better understand the mechanisms behind multi-turn information
seeking dialogues? How can we use these insights to design a dialogue system
that does not require explicit query formulation upfront as in question
answering? To answer these questions, we collected observations of human
participants performing a similar task to obtain inspiration for the system
design. Then, we studied the structure of conversations that occurred in these
settings and used the resulting insights to develop a grounded theory, design
and evaluate a first system prototype. Evaluation results show that our
approach is effective and can complement query-based information retrieval
approaches. We contribute new insights about information-seeking behavior by
analyzing and providing automated support for a type of information-seeking
strategy that is effective when the clarity of the information need and
familiarity with the collection content are low.
