Assessing enhanced knowledge discovery systems (eKDSs) constitutes an intricate issue that is understood merely to a certain extent by now. Based upon an analysis of why it is difficult to formally evaluate eKDSs, it is argued for a change of perspective: eKDSs should be understood as intelligent tools for qualitative analysis that support, rather than substitute, the user in the exploration of the data; a qualitative gap will be identified as the main reason why the evaluation of enhanced knowledge discovery systems is difficult. In order to deal with this problem, the construction of a best practice model for eKDSs is advocated. Based on a brief recapitulation of similar work on spoken language dialogue systems, first steps towards achieving this goal are performed, and directions of future research are outlined
