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FACE: A Fine-Grained Reference-Free Evaluator for Conversational Information Access

sigir26-034 · Full research paper · Hideaki Joko, Faegheh Hasibi
User Behavior and Search Interaction · 50% Interactive Information Seeking and · 50%
Abstract

A systematic, reliable, and low-cost evaluation of Conversational Information Access (CIA) systems remains an open challenge. Existing reference-based evaluation methods have proven insufficient for evaluating the dynamic nature of information access conversations, while existing LLM-based reference-free methods suffer from evaluation bias and limited generalizability. We propose FACE: a Fine-grained, Aspect-based Conversation Evaluator that evaluates diverse turn- and dialogue-level aspects of conversations. FACE leverages beam search and bandit optimization to select optimized LLM instructions for each evaluation aspect. It assigns scores to atomic information units (particles) using the selected instructions and then aggregates them into a single score. We show that FACE achieves strong correlations with human judgments, outperforming state-of-the-art conversation evaluation methods by a large margin. We further demonstrate that its optimized instructions are transferable across various LLMs and datasets. Additionally, unlike existing LLM-based methods that provide single uninterpretable scores, FACE provides insights into the system performance and enables identifying and locating problems within conversations.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy)
1 Fan Zhang 0053
67
100 How Users Interact with Generative Information Retrieval Systems: A Study of User Behavior and Search Experience (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
100 Conversational vs Traditional: Comparing Search Behavior and Outcome in Legal Case Retrieval (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 Constructing Better Evaluation Metrics by Incorporating the Anchoring Effect into the User Model (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction
2 Saber Zerhoudi
47
100 From SERPs to Agents: A Platform for Comparative Studies of Information Interaction (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
88 Beyond the Click: A Framework for Inferring Cognitive Traces in Search (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
85 In-Browser Agents for Search Assistance (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Ziyi Ye 51
Area-chair candidates (8)
Ziyi Ye assigned 5114 papers
Zhijing Wu 0001 409 papers
Fernando Diaz 0001 3212 papers
Jun Xu 0001 302 papers
Chenyan Xiong COI: co-author 2915 papers
Kam-Fai Wong 296 papers
Xiaoxi Li 0005 2815 papers
Xiaoxue Zang 284 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
1 Vuong Thanh Tung 75 3
85 Spoken Conversational Context Improves Query Auto-completion in Web Search (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 Understanding user behavior in naturalistic information search tasks (2019) User Behavior and Search Interaction
2 Jiqun Liu 74 3
72 Task Supportive and Personalized Human-Large Language Model Interaction: A User Study (2024) Interactive Information Seeking and Evaluation
72 State-Aware Meta-Evaluation of Evaluation Metrics in Interactive Information Retrieval (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
3 Sara Allawati 68 3
72 What do Users Really Ask Large Language Models? An Initial Log Analysis of Google Bard Interactions in the Wild (2024) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 From Lab to Reality: An Eye-tracking Study of How Users are Influenced to Search in the Era of GenAI (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
4 Fan Zhang 0053 assigned 67 3
100 How Users Interact with Generative Information Retrieval Systems: A Study of User Behavior and Search Experience (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
100 Conversational vs Traditional: Comparing Search Behavior and Outcome in Legal Case Retrieval (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
5 Jaime Arguello 55 3
100 The effects of goal-setting on learning during information seeking with generative AI (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 Learning assessments in search-as-learning: A survey of prior work and opportunities for future research (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction
7 Saber Zerhoudi assigned 47 3
100 From SERPs to Agents: A Platform for Comparative Studies of Information Interaction (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
88 Beyond the Click: A Framework for Inferring Cognitive Traces in Search (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
8 Mark D. Smucker 47 3
72 IR Evaluation: Modeling User Behavior for Measuring Effectiveness (2015) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 Time-based calibration of effectiveness measures (2012) User Behavior and Search Interaction
9 Leif Azzopardi 47 3
72 TREC iKAT 2023: A Test Collection for Evaluating Conversational and Interactive Knowledge Assistants (2024) Interactive Information Seeking and Evaluation
72 Second International Workshop On the Evaluation of Collaborative Information Seeking and Retrieval (Ecol'17) (2017) Interactive Information Seeking and Evaluation
10 Romain Deffayet 46 3
72 Evaluating the Robustness of Click Models to Policy Distributional Shift (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 An Offline Metric for the Debiasedness of Click Models (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction
11 Paul Thomas 0001 44 3
72 Third Workshop on Building towards Information Interaction and Retrieval Resources Re-use (BIIRRR 2022) (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction
72 Focused and aggregated search: a perspective from natural language generation (2010) Interactive Information Seeking and Evaluation
12 Falk Scholer 44 3
70 Classifying Term Variants in Query Formulation (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
70 Can Users Predict Relative Query Effectiveness? (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction
13 Xuanhui Wang 41 3
72 Cross-Positional Attention for Debiasing Clicks (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
65 Learning with Sparse and Biased Feedback for Personal Search (2018) User Behavior and Search Interaction
15 Tetsuya Sakai 35 3
40 Summaries, ranked retrieval and sessions: a unified framework for information access evaluation (2013) Evaluation Metrics and User Models
40 Diversified search evaluation: lessons from the NTCIR-9 INTENT task (2013) Evaluation Metrics and User Models
16 Zhen Qin 0001 33 3
65 Cross-Positional Attention for Debiasing Clicks (2021) User Behavior and Search Interaction
65 Revisiting Two-tower Models for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2022) User Behavior and Search Interaction
17 Shuaiqiang Wang 33 3
66 FULTR: A Large-Scale Fusion Learning to Rank Dataset and Its Application for Satisfaction-Oriented Ranking (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
64 RankExpert: A Mixture of Textual-and-Behavioral Experts for Multi-Objective Learning-to-Rank in Web Search (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
18 Yujia Zhou 0002 33 3
69 Incorporating Explicit Subtopics in Personalized Search (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction
69 Intent-Oriented Dynamic Interest Modeling for Personalized Web Search (2024) User Behavior and Search Interaction
19 Negar Arabzadeh 32 3
50 Query Performance Prediction: From Ad-hoc to Conversational Search (2023) Query Performance Prediction
34 A Reproducibility Study of LLM-Based Query Reformulation (2026) Query Reformulation and Expansion
21 Yifan Wang 0017 32 3
100 User Perception of Recommendation Explanation: Are Your Explanations What Users Need? (2023) User Behavior and Search Interaction
26 Improving Long-tail User CTR Prediction via Hierarchical Distribution Alignment (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods
22 Idan Szpektor 32 3
72 Predicting web searcher satisfaction with existing community-based answers (2011) User Behavior and Search Interaction
36 Identifying Web Queries with Question Intent (2016) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval
23 Gustavo Penha 31 3
67 As It Was: Aligning LLM Search Evaluation with Historical User Preferences (2026) User Behavior and Search Interaction
34 Contextualizing Spotify's Audiobook List Recommendations with Descriptive Shelves (2025) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
24 Theresia Veronika Rampisela 30 3
30 Relevance-aware Individual Item Fairness Measures for Recommender Systems: Limitations and Usage Guidelines (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation
30 Evaluation Measures of Individual Item Fairness for Recommender Systems: A Critical Study (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation
26 Yong Li 0004 30 3
72 Towards an Inclusive Mobile Web: A Dataset and Framework for Focusability in UI Accessibility (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
31 Efficient Memory Alignment for Long-term Conversational Information Seeking (2026) Conversational Search and Retrieval
27 Sunhao Dai 29 3
100 NExT-Search: Rebuilding User Feedback Ecosystem for Generative AI Search (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
30 AdaO2B: Adaptive Online to Batch Conversion for Out-of-Distribution Generalization (2025) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization
28 Jialong Wu 0007 29 3
33 AdaRewriter: Unleashing the Power of Prompting-based Conversational Query Reformulation via Test-Time Adaptation (2025) Query Reformulation and Expansion
33 AdaCQR: Enhancing Query Reformulation for Conversational Search via Sparse and Dense Retrieval Alignment (2025) Query Reformulation and Expansion
29 Xiao Zhang 0034 29 3
32 UniSAR: Modeling User Transition Behaviors between Search and Recommendation (2024) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
32 Similarity = Value? Consultation Value-Assessment and Alignment for Personalized Search (2025) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval
30 Zechun Niu 29 3
33 Investigating the Robustness of Counterfactual Learning to Rank Models: A Reproducibility Study (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank
28 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank
33 Yang Song 0008 29 3
68 Query-Less: Predicting Task Repetition for NextGen Proactive Search and Recommendation Engines (2016) User Behavior and Search Interaction
34 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
34 Bo Peng 0009 29 3
65 SWaT: Statistical Modeling of Video Watch Time through User Behavior Analysis (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
27 eCeLLM: Generalizing Large Language Models for E-commerce from Large-scale, High-quality Instruction Data (2024) Efficiency and Deployment
35 Tingyu Song 29 3
65 IFIR: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Evaluating Instruction-Following in Expert-Domain Information Retrieval (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction
25 Rethinking Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval: Evaluating and Advancing Retrievers in Agentic Search Systems (2026) Reasoning-Intensive Retrieval and Ranking
37 Yuta Saito 28 3
34 Evaluating the Robustness of Off-Policy Evaluation (2021) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation
33 Off-Policy Evaluation of Ranking Policies under Diverse User Behavior (2023) Recommendation with Search and Ranking