User Modeling - Usages

Usages

• Adaptive hypermedia: In an adaptive hypermedia system the displayed content and the offered hyperlinks are chosen on basis of users' specific characteristics, taking their goals, interests, knowledge and abilities into account. Thus, an adaptive hypermedia system aims to reduce the "lost in hyperspace" syndrome by presenting only relevant information.
• Adaptive educational hypermedia: Being a subdivision of adaptive hypermedia the main focus of adaptive educational hypermedia lies on education, displaying content and hyperlinks corresponding to the user's knowledge on the field of study.
• Intelligent tutoring system: Unlike adaptive educational hypermedia systems intelligent tutoring systems are stand-alone systems. Their aim is to help students in a specific field of study. To do so, they build up a user model where they store information about abilities, knowledge and needs of the user. The system can now adapt to this user by presenting appropriate exercises and examples and offering hints and help where the user is most likely to need them.
• Expert systems: Expert systems are computer systems that emulate the decision-making ability of a human expert in order to help the user solving a problem in a specific area. Step by step they ask questions to identify the current problem and to find a solution. User models can be used to adapt to the current user's knowledge, differentiating between experts and novices. The system can assume, that experienced users are able to understand and answer more complex questions than someone who is new to the topic. Therefore, it can adjust the used vocabulary and the type of question which are presented to the user, thus reducing the steps needed to find a solution.
• Recommender system: The basic idea of recommender systems is to present a selection of items to the user which best fit his or her needs. This selection can be based on items the user has bookmarked, rated, bought, recently viewed, etc. Recommender systems are often used in e-commerce but may also cover areas like social networks, websites, news, etc.
• User-Simulation: Since user modeling allows the system to hold an internal representation of a specific user, different types of users can be simulated by artificially modeling them. Common types are "experts" or "novices" on the scope of the system or the usage of the system. Based on these characteristics user tests can be simulated.