Alfred Kobsa - Böcker

Hypertext/hypermedia systems and user-model-based adaptive systems in the areas of learning and information retrieval have for a long time been considered as two mutually exclusive approaches to information access. Adaptive systems tailor information to the user and may guide the user in the information space to present the most relevant material, taking into account a model of the user's goals, interests and preferences. Hypermedia systems, on the other hand, are "user neutral": they provide the user with the tools and the freedom to explore an information space by browsing through a complex network of information nodes. Adaptive hypertext and hypermedia systems attempt to bridge the gap between these two approaches. Adaptation of hypermedia systems to each individual user is increasingly needed. With the growing size, complexity and heterogeneity of current hypermedia systems, such as the World Wide Web, it becomes virtually impossible to impose guidelines on authors concerning the overall organization of hypermedia information.The networks therefore become so complex and unstructured that the existing navigational tools are no longer powerful enough to provide orientation on where to search for the needed information. It is also not possible to identify appropriate pre-defined paths or subnets for users with certain goals and knowledge backgrounds since the user community of hypermedia systems is usually quite inhomogeneous. This is particularly true for Web-based applications which are expected to be used by a much greater variety of users than any earlier standalone application. A possible remedy for the negative effects of the traditional "one-size-fits-all" approach in the development of hypermedia systems is to equip them with the ability to adapt to the needs of their individual users. A possible way of achieving adaptivity is by modelling the users and tailoring the system's interactions to their goals, tasks and interests.In this sense, the notion of adaptive hypertext/hypermedia comes naturally to denote a hypertext or hypermedia system which reflects some features of the user and/or characteristics of his system usage in a user model, and utilizes this model in order to adapt various behavioral aspects of the system to the user. This book is a comprehensive publication on adaptive hypertext and hypermedia. It is oriented towards researchers and practitioners in the fields of hypertext and hypermedia, information systems, and personalized systems. It should also serve a resource for the numerous developers of Web-based applications. The design decisions, adaptation methods, and experience presented in this book are a unique source of ideas and techniques for developing more usable and more intelligent Web-based systems suitable for a great variety of users.

"Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction" brings together research that spans several disciplines related to artificial intelligence, including natural language processing, information retrieval, machine learning, planning, and computer-aided instruction, to account for the role that mixed initiative plays in the design of intelligent systems. The ten contributions address the single issue of how control of an interaction should be managed when abilities needed to solve a problem are distributed among collaborating agents. Managing control of an interaction among humans and computers to gather and assemble knowledge and expertise is a major challenge that must be met to develop machines that effectively collaborate with humans. This is the first collection to specifically address this issue.

TV viewers today are exposed to overwhelming amounts of information, and challenged by the plethora of interactive functionality provided by current set-top boxes. To ensure broad adoption of this technology by consumers, future Digital Television will have to take usability issues thoroughly into account. In particular serious attention must be paid to facilitate the selection of content on an individual basis, and to provide easy-to-use interfaces that satisfy viewers' interaction requirements. This volume collects selected research reports on the development of personalized services for Interactive TV. Drawing upon contributions from academia and industry in the US, Europe and Asia, this book represents a comprehensive picture of leading edge research in personalized television.

Die Beiträge dieses Tagungsbands befassen sich aus der Sicht der Linguistischen Datenverarbeitung und ihrer benachbarten Disziplinen mit den Interaktionsmöglichkeiten zwischen Mensch und Computer. Zu diesen Disziplinen gehören z. B. Informatik, insbesondere Software-Engineering und Künstliche Intelligenz, sowie Psychologie und Arbeitswissenschaft. Sowohl unter praktischen als auch unter theoretischen Gesichtspunkten wird untersucht, wie menschliche Informationsverarbeitung erklärt und die Wechselwirkung zwischen Mensch und Computer optimiert werden kann und wie sich geeignete Software entwerfen läßt. Hierbei wird immer wieder die Möglichkeit natürlichsprachlicher Mensch-Computer-Dialoge im Vergleich zu anderen Interaktionsstilen diskutiert. Die Ansätze in den verschiedenen Disziplinen können zusammengenommen wichtige Anregungen für die Linguistische Datenverarbeitung geben.

Following the increase in of the information available on the Web, the diversity of its users and the complexity of Web applications, researchers started developing adaptive Web systems that tailored their appearance and behavior to each individual user or user group. Adaptive systems were designed for different usage contexts, exploring different kinds of personalization. Web personalization has evolved into a large research field attracting scientists from different communities such as hypertext, user modeling, machine learning, natural language generation, information retrieval, intelligent tutoring systems, cognitive science, and Web-based education.This state-of-the-art survey provides a systematic overview of the ideas and techniques of the adaptive Web and serves as a central source of information for researchers, practitioners, and students. The volume constitutes a comprehensive and carefully planned collection of chapters, mapping out the most important areas of the adaptive Web, each solicited from experts and leaders in the field.The largest part of the book focuses on personalization techniques, namely the modeling side of personalization (Chaps. 1-5), and on adaptation, (Chaps. 6-14). The technique-focused part is complemented by four domain-oriented chapters in the third section of the book (Chaps. 15-18). The last section is devoted to recently emerging topics; it provides a prospective view of the new ideas and techniques that are moving rapidly into the focus of the adaptive Web community and gives the reader a glimpse into the not-so-distant future.

The 18th InternationalConference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Person- ization(UMAP 2010)took placeon BigIsland, HawaiiduringJune 20-24,2010. It was the second conference after UMAP 2009 in Trento, Italy, which merged the successful biannual User Modeling (UM) and Adaptive Hypermedia (AH) conference series. The ResearchPapertrackof the conferencewaschairedbyPaulDe Brafrom the Eindhoven University of Technology and Alfred Kobsa from the University ofCalifornia,Irvine. TheywereassistedbyaninternationalProgramCommittee of 80 leading ?gures in the AH and UM communities as well as highly promising youngerresearchers. Papersinthe ResearchPapertrackweregenerallyreviewed by three and sometimes even four reviewers, with one of them acting as a lead who initiates a discussion between reviewers and reconciles their opinions in a meta-review. The conferencesolicitedLong ResearchPapersof up to 12pagesin length, whichrepresentoriginalreports of substantivenew research. In addition, theconferenceacceptedShortResearchPapersofuptosixpagesinlength,whose merit was assessed more in terms of originality and importance than maturity and technical validation.The Research Paper track received 161 submission, with 112 in the long and 49 in the short paper category. Of these, 26 long and 6 short papers were accepted, resulting in an acceptance rate of 23. 2% for long papers and 19. 9% overall. Many authors of rejected papers were encouraged to resubmit to the Poster and Demo track of the conference. Following the example of UMAP 2009, the conference also had an Ind- try Paper track chaired by Bhaskar Mehta from Google, Zur .. ich, Switzerland and Kurt Partridge from PARC, Palo Alto, USA.

User models have recently attracted much research interest in the field of artificial intelligence dialog systems. It has become evident that flexible user-oriented dialog behavior of such systems can be achieved only if the system has access to a model of the user containing assumptions about his/her background knowledge as well as his/her goals and plans in consulting the system. Research in the field of user models investigates how such assumptions can be automatically created, represented and exploited by the system in the course of an "on-line" interaction with the user. The communication medium in this interaction need not necessarily be a natural language, such as English or German. Formal interaction languages are also permit­ ted. The emphasis is placed on systems with natural language input and output, however. A dozen major and several more minor user modeling systems have been de­ signed and implemented in the last decade, mostly in the context of natural-language dialog systems. The goal of UM86, the first international workshop on user model­ ing, was to bring together the researchers working on these projects so that results could be discussed and analyzed, and hopefully general insights be found, that could prove useful for future research. The meeting took place in Maria Laach, a small village some 40 miles south of Bonn, West Germany. 25 prominent researchers were invited to participate.

Hypertext/hypermedia systems and user-model-based adaptive systems in the areas of learning and information retrieval have for a long time been considered as two mutually exclusive approaches to information access. Adaptive systems tailor information to the user and may guide the user in the information space to present the most relevant material, taking into account a model of the user's goals, interests and preferences. Hypermedia systems, on the other hand, are 'user neutral': they provide the user with the tools and the freedom to explore an information space by browsing through a complex network of information nodes. Adaptive hypertext and hypermedia systems attempt to bridge the gap between these two approaches. Adaptation of hypermedia systems to each individual user is increasingly needed. With the growing size, complexity and heterogeneity of current hypermedia systems, such as the World Wide Web, it becomes virtually impossible to impose guidelines on authors concerning the overall organization of hypermedia information.The networks therefore become so complex and unstructured that the existing navigational tools are no longer powerful enough to provide orientation on where to search for the needed information. It is also not possible to identify appropriate pre-defined paths or subnets for users with certain goals and knowledge backgrounds since the user community of hypermedia systems is usually quite inhomogeneous. This is particularly true for Web-based applications which are expected to be used by a much greater variety of users than any earlier standalone application. A possible remedy for the negative effects of the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' approach in the development of hypermedia systems is to equip them with the ability to adapt to the needs of their individual users. A possible way of achieving adaptivity is by modeling the users and tailoring the system's interactions to their goals, tasks and interests.In this sense, the notion of adaptive hypertext/hypermedia comes naturally to denote a hypertext or hypermedia system which reflects some features of the user and/or characteristics of his system usage in a user model, and utilizes this model in order to adapt various behavioral aspects of the system to the user. This book is the first comprehensive publication on adaptive hypertext and hypermedia. It is oriented towards researchers and practitioners in the fields of hypertext and hypermedia, information systems, and personalized systems. It is also an important resource for the numerous developers of Web-based applications. The design decisions, adaptation methods, and experience presented in this book are a unique source of ideas and techniques for developing more usable and more intelligent Web-based systems suitable for a great variety of users. The practitioners will find it important that many of the adaptation techniques presented in this book have proved to be efficient and are ready to be used in various applications.

Computational Models of Mixed-Initiative Interaction brings together research that spans several disciplines related to artificial intelligence, including natural language processing, information retrieval, machine learning, planning, and computer-aided instruction, to account for the role that mixed initiative plays in the design of intelligent systems. The ten contributions address the single issue of how control of an interaction should be managed when abilities needed to solve a problem are distributed among collaborating agents. Managing control of an interaction among humans and computers to gather and assemble knowledge and expertise is a major challenge that must be met to develop machines that effectively collaborate with humans. This is the first collection to specifically address this issue.