User Modeling

 The internal and communicative behaviour of an interactive computer system is affected by its knowledge about the user, which may be implicit in the design of the system, or explicitly available. User-adapted interaction, however, requires the use of an explicit model of the user, i.e., the knowledge about the user must be explicitly represented and modifiable, and the system has to contain mechanisms to exploit this explicit information to adapt its behaviour to specific users dynamically.

A user model is a knowledge source which contains explicit assumptions on all aspects of the user that may be relevant for the behaviour of the system. A user modeling component is that part of an interactive system whose function is to

• incrementally build up a user model,
• to store, update and delete entries in it,
• to maintain the consistency of the model,
• and to supply other components of the system with assumptions about the user.

This knowledge-based approach to user modeling originated from activities in different areas of Artificial Intelligence research:

• Natural Language Dialog Systems,
• Intelligent Help Systems,
• Intelligent Tutoring Systems,
• Human-Machine Interfaces.

User modeling constitutes an interdisciplinary research theme which attracts scientists from diverse fields like Computer Science, Psychology, Linguistics, the Information Sciences, and the Instructional Sciences who are conducting research to develop the theory, techniques, and tools necessary for constructing interactive computer systems that can be adapted or adapt themselves to their current users.

Selected References:

  

• A. Kobsa, W. Wahlster (eds.): User Models in Dialog Systems. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 1989.
• A. Kobsa, W. Pohl: The BGP-MS User Modeling System. In: User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction 4(2), pp. 59-106, 1995.
• M. McTear (ed.): Artificial Intelligence Review Journal 7, Special Issue on User Modeling, 1993.
• Proc. of UM-96, Fifth International Conference on User Modeling, 2-5 January 1996, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. User Modeling, Inc., 1996.
• W. Wahlster: Distinguishing User Models from Discourse Models. In: Computational Linguistics 14, pp. 101-103, 1988.