The World Wide Web has provided access to a diverse range of information sources and systems.
People engaging with this rich network of information may need to interact with different
technologies, interfaces, and information providers in the course of a single search task. These
systems may offer different interaction affordances and require users to adapt their informationseeking
strategies. Not only is this challenging for users, but it also presents challenges for the
designers of interactive systems, who need to make their own system useful and usable to broad user
groups. The popularity of Web browsing and Web search engines has given rise to distinct forms of
information-seeking behaviour, and new interaction styles, but we do not yet fully understand these
or their implications for the development of new systems.
Web Information Seeking and Interaction (WISI) (i.e., the interaction of users with Web-based
content and applications during information-seeking activities) is a topic that unites many strands of
academic and commercial research, from studies of information-seeking behaviour to the design and
construction of large-scale interactive systems. Designing components to support this interaction
(and evaluating these components) is particularly challenging given the scale of the Web, the
diversity of the user population, the diversity in tasks being undertaken, and the dynamic nature of
the information. This workshop acted as a focal point for researchers and practitioners whose work is
related to Web information seeking and interaction, to enable them to share experiences and
collaborate.
Papers submitted to the workshop were reviewed by an international programme committee and 16
short papers and position papers were accepted for the workshop proceedings. These papers reflect
the diversity of interest and contributions to the area of Web information seeking and interaction,
describing research on evaluation, interaction modelling, information behaviour, personalisation,
document surrogates, and novel interface development, amongst other topics. The proceedings are
available at http://research.microsoft.com/~ryenw/proceedings/WISI2007.pdf.