Adaptive Hypermedia - Application Fields

Application Fields

A very popular (and historically the first) application field of adaptive hypermedia is adaptive educational hypermedia (AEH), which tailors what the learner sees to that learner's goals, abilities, needs, interests, and knowledge of the subject, by providing hyperlinks that are most relevant to the user. Essentially, the teaching tools "adapt" to the learner. Of course, this requires the system to be able to effectively infer the learner's needs and desires.

However, AEH is not the only application field for AH. E-business can be performed via adaptive hypermedia, where the items offered for purchasing are adapted to the user's detected interests. A good example of such behaviour is the Amazon book recommendation, where a current buyer is offered books via the catchphrase "buyers who bought this book also bought ...". Thus, the use of adaptive hypermedia is not limited to formal (or informal) education or training endeavours. Such systems can increase profits by adapting to consumers' searches (sometimes unconscious) for goods, services, and experiences. Thus, systems like Amazon are also examples of adaptive hypermedia, recommending books based on user preferences and prior history. Other application fields of adaptive hypermedia, besides adaptive e-learning and adaptive e-commerce applications, can be adaptive e-government applications. Generally speaking, adaptive hypermedia systems can be useful anywhere where hypertext and hypermedia are used. The most popular adaptive hypermedia systems are web-based systems.