Personalized user preference elicitation for e-services

The quality of the results produced by personalized e-service applications like product recommenders, buying advisory applications, or product configurators is strongly determined by the accuracy of the system\´s estimate of the individual customer\´s real needs and preferences. In particular in domains where customers cannot be classified automatically, e.g., based on past buying behavior, these needs have to be interactively elicited by questioning the user. In many existing systems only a "one-style-fits-all" approach based on static fill-out forms is chosen. However, this does not take the user\´s background or capabilities into account, which consequently leads to a poor quality of the acquired user model. In this paper, we show how extensive personalization of the user preference elicitation process itself can significantly improve the accuracy of interactively acquired user models. A comprehensive view on adaptation and personalization opportunities in the elicitation process is developed and corresponding examples for the domain of interactive buying advisory are given. The presented personalization and adaptation techniques are implemented in a domain-independent software framework for building interactive advisory applications. We describe specific architectural requirements for such a system and discuss results from various real-world applications.