Considering the multimodal signals of search items is beneficial for retrieval effectiveness. Especially in web table retrieval (WTR) experiments, accounting for multimodal properties of tables boosts effectiveness. However, it still remains an open question how the single modalities affect user experience in particular. Previous work analyzed WTR performance in ad-hoc retrieval benchmarks, which neglects interactive search behavior and limits the conclusion about the implications for real-world user environments. To this end, this work presents an in-depth evaluation of simulated interactive WTR search sessions as a more cost-efficient and reproducible alternative to real user studies. As a first of its kind, we introduce interactive query reformulation strategies based on Doc2Query, incorporating cognitive states of simulated user knowledge. Our evaluations include two perspectives on user effectiveness by considering different cost paradigms, namely query-wise and time-oriented measures of effort. Our multi-perspective evaluation scheme reveals new insights about query strategies, the impact of modalities, and different user types in simulated WTR search sessions.

翻译：考虑搜索项的多模态信号有助于提升检索效果。尤其在网页表格检索实验中，融合表格的多模态特性能够显著增强检索效能。然而，单模态信息如何具体影响用户体验仍是一个悬而未决的问题。现有研究主要基于即席检索基准评测网页表格检索性能，这种方法忽略了交互式搜索行为，难以得出适用于真实用户环境的结论。为此，本文提出通过仿真交互式网页表格检索会话进行深度评估，作为比真实用户研究更经济高效且可复现的替代方案。我们首次引入基于Doc2Query的交互式查询重构策略，融入模拟用户知识状态的认知模型。通过考量两种不同的成本范式——即查询维度和时间维度的努力度量——从用户效能双重视角展开评估。这种多视角评估体系揭示了仿真检索会话中查询策略、模态影响及用户类型的新规律。