User Simulation in Practice: Lessons Learned from Three Shared Tasks

The Cranfield paradigm has been the dominant approach to evaluate information retrieval systems for decades, but—in its classical form—has clear limitations when it comes to conversational search systems, which synthesize unique outputs in a dynamic multi-turn interaction with the user. User simulation, i.e., the interaction of a computer program with a retrieval system instead of a human user to generate plausible conversations as a basis for evaluation, was proposed several years ago as a way to integrate the dynamics of conversational systems into an evaluation framework. Seen as a distant vision for years, the advent of large language models has propelled this idea forward. In 2025, there were the first three shared tasks in information retrieval where user simulation was used for evaluation or was the participants' goal. In this article, the organizers of these three shared tasks report on their specific evaluation approaches, highlight differences in setup, report on insights gained, and look to the future to discuss how user simulation can be integrated into a new evaluation paradigm.

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Publication Details

Journal
ACM SIGIR Forum
Published
2025-12-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1145/3799914.3799917
Primary Topic
Speech and dialogue systems
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00
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article

User Simulation in Practice: Lessons Learned from Three Shared Tasks

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User Simulation in Practice: Lessons Learned from Three Shared Tasks

Marcel Gohsen, Simon Lupart, Mohammad Aliannejadi, Nailia Mirzakhmedova, Timo Breuer, Christin Katharina Kreutz, Jeff Dalton, Harrisen Scells, Zahra Abbasiantaeb, Philipp Schaer, Andreas Konstantin Kruff, Johannes Kiesel, Benno Stein, Krisztian Balog, Maik Fröbe
article en

Abstract

The Cranfield paradigm has been the dominant approach to evaluate information retrieval systems for decades, but—in its classical form—has clear limitations when it comes to conversational search systems, which synthesize unique outputs in a dynamic multi-turn interaction with the user. User simulation, i.e., the interaction of a computer program with a retrieval system instead of a human user to generate plausible conversations as a basis for evaluation, was proposed several years ago as a way to integrate the dynamics of conversational systems into an evaluation framework. Seen as a distant vision for years, the advent of large language models has propelled this idea forward. In 2025, there were the first three shared tasks in information retrieval where user simulation was used for evaluation or was the participants' goal. In this article, the organizers of these three shared tasks report on their specific evaluation approaches, highlight differences in setup, report on insights gained, and look to the future to discuss how user simulation can be integrated into a new evaluation paradigm.

ACM SIGIR ForumVol. 59(2)
TH Köln - University of Applied Sciences (DE), GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences (DE), Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Tübingen (DE), Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen (DE), Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (DE), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (NL), Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE), University of Tübingen (DE), University of Amsterdam (NL), University of Stavanger (NO), University of Edinburgh (GB)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 13%
Speech and dialogue systems
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