Towards Multi-Modal Conversational Information Seeking

Recent research on conversational information seeking (CIS) mostly focuses on uni-modal interactions and information items. This per- spective paper highlights the importance of moving towards de- veloping and evaluating multi-modal conversational information seeking (MMCIS) systems as they enable us to leverage richer context, overcome errors, and increase accessibility. We bridge the gap between the multi-modal and CIS research and provide a formal definition for MMCIS. We discuss potential opportunities and research challenges in designing, implementing, and evaluating MMCIS systems. Based on this research, we propose and implement a practical open-source framework for facilitating MMCIS research.