An exploratory study to design an adaptive hypermedia system for online-advertisement

The revolutionary world of the World Wide Web has created an open space for a multitude of fields to develop and propagate. One of these major fields is advertisement. Online advertisement has become one of the main activities conducted on the web, heavily supported by the industry. Importantly, it is one of the main contributors to any businesses’ income. However, consumers usually ignore the great majority of adverts online. This research paper studies the field of online advertisement, by conducting an exploratory study to understand end users’ needs for targeted online advertisement using adaptive hypermedia techniques. Additionally, we explore social networks, one of the booming phenomena of the web, to enhance the appropriateness of the advertising to the users. The main current outcome of this research is that end users are interested in personalised advertisement that tackles their needs and that they believe that the use of social networks and social actions help in the contextualisation of advertisement

MyAds: A Social Adaptive System for Online Advertisement from Hypotheses to Implementation

Online advertisement is one of the major incomes for many companies; it has a role in the overall business flow and affects the consumer behavior directly. Unfortunately most users tend to block their ads or ignore them. MyAds is a social adaptive hypermedia system for online advertising and its main goal is to explore how to make online ads more acceptable. In order to achieve such a goal, various technologies and techniques are used. This paper presents a theoretical framework as well as the system architecture for MyAds that was designed based on a set of hypotheses and an exploratory study. The system then was implemented and a pilot experiment was conducted to validate it. The main outcomes suggest that the system has provided personalized ads for users. The main implications suggest that the system can be used for further testing and validating

Designing an adaptive online advertisement system : a focus group methodology

Human Computer Interaction systems have access to the valuable resource of information that can be collected directly from users of these systems and services. This idea has become a part of the design process for systems that touch users’ perceptions - here, in the field of online advertising and marketing. This research paper discusses a revisited design for an adaptive online advertisement system called MyAds. The methodological approach used for proposing a new design was the focus group methodology, due to the fact that it produces concrete ideas that are needed at this stage of the research. The main outcomes of the experiment agreed on using Amazon as a motivational blueprint for the new design and generated a list of requirements from users, in order for their acceptance level of personalised online advertisements to increase

A framework for adaptive personalised e-advertisements

The art of personalised e-advertising relies on attracting the user‟s attention to the recommended product, as it relates to their taste, interest and data. Whilst in practice, companies attempt various forms of personalisation; research of personalised e-advertising is rare, and seldom routed on solid theory. Adaptive hypermedia (AH) techniques have contributed to the development of personalised tools for adaptive content delivery, mostly in the educational domain. This study explores the use of these theories and techniques in a specific field – adaptive e-advertisements. This is accomplished firstly by structuring a theoretical framework that roots adaptive hypermedia into the domain of e-advertising and then uses this theoretical framework as the base for implementing and evaluating an adaptive e-advertisement system called “MyAds”. The novelty of this approach relies on a systematic design and evaluation based on adaptive hypermedia taxonomy. In particular, this thesis uses a user centric methodology to design and evaluate the proposed approach. It also reports on evaluations that investigated users‟ opinions on the appropriate design of MyAds. Another set of evaluations reported on users‟ perceptions of the implemented system, allowing for a reflection on the users‟ acceptance level of e-advertising. The results from both implicit and explicit feedback indicated that users found the MyAds system acceptable and agreed that the implemented user modelling and AH features within the system contributed to achieving acceptance, within their e-advertisement experience due to the different personalisation methods

Lightweight adaptive personalised e-advertising

Adaptation and personalisation is aimed at improving the user experience in e-systems. Personalisation was initially applied in the fields of distance learning and web-based educational systems. Adaptation can be also used in e-advertising, to increase customer satisfaction and encourage repeat visits to websites. Several models/frameworks have been designed for adaptation, for instance AHAM, LAOS, AdRosa, and MyAds. Many systems have been developed based on these frameworks. Most previous models/frameworks were primarily designed for personalised educational experience and were aimed at standalone systems, which cannot be (easily) integrated into existing websites in a lightweight manner. In addition, some of them are used in the portal model of advertising, since they match the interests of the publisher and the advertiser. The aim of this work is to overcome the limitations and weaknesses of these models and systems to deliver adaptive advertising. This work firstly attempts to support and facilitate the integration between adaptive systems and business websites. It also introduces a method to control and adapt advertisements located and owned by businesses. This thesis further proposes a generalised model, the Layered Adaptive Advertising Integration (LAAI), as the starting point for the development of an adaptive advertisement system. In a second stage, it presents a study that assesses the effectiveness of a system (AEADS) based on this model, via a trial run of a model prototype with users (both customers and business owners). In a third stage, social networks are used as inputs for the user model of customers, to enhance the efficiency of acquiring user information, as an addition to the user registration process. Furthermore, social interactions, such as the facility to use “like”, are added to the user model, and the delivery process has the ability to apply actions based on this data. Finally, an evaluation of the whole system proposed is conducted, with business owners and Internet users alike

Requirements elicitation techniques for software development: a systematic review of literature

Introduction: Requirements elicitation (RE) is a difficult task in which there are issues related to information ambiguity, incomplete and inconsistent data. It seeks to discover and understand the users' problems and needs. The success of software development depends on the correct elicitation of requirements, and its quality is influenced by the techniques used.  This research aims to identify the RE techniques most cited in the literature of software development projects within this context. Method: a systematic literature review was carried out, which analyzed 61 articles from the Scopus database. Results: We identified the 10 RE techniques most cited in the literature. The ranking of these techniques showed that those obtained by stakeholders' groups' involvement were the least mentioned. Conclusions: the research identified the opportunity and relevance for developing a descriptive or confirmatory analysis of RE techniques based on the interaction between groups of users and members of the software development team.Introdução: A elicitação de requisitos (ER) é uma tarefa difícil na qual é necessário lidar com ambiguidade de informações, dados incompletos e inconsistentes. Ela busca descobrir e entender o real problema e as necessidades dos usuários. O sucesso do desenvolvimento de software depende da elicitação correta dos requisitos, e a qualidade deles é influenciada pelas técnicas usadas. Dentro deste contexto, o objetivo desta pesquisa é identificar as técnicas de ER mais citadas na literatura em projetos de desenvolvimento de software. Método: Foi realizada uma revisão sistemática da literatura, que analisou 61 artigos da base de dados Scopus. Resultados: Foram identificadas as 10 técnicas de ER mais citadas na literatura. A classificação dessas técnicas mostrou que aquelas obtidas pelo envolvimento de grupos de stakeholders foram as menos citadas. Conclusão: A pesquisa identificou a oportunidade e relevância para o desenvolvimento de pesquisa acadêmica descritiva ou confirmatória sobre técnicas de ER baseadas na interação entre grupos de usuários e membros da equipe de desenvolvimento de software

Linear and non-linear navigations of learning content

This paper reports a study concerning linear and non-linear navigations in WBI.The effects of the two navigations on students’ engagement aspects namely; control, focus, curiosity, and intrinsic interests were investigated. The study aimed to identify whether the linear and the non-linear navigations could be the factors that influence students’ engagement while learning in WBI environment.An exploratory experimental study was conducted on seventy-two students from a university in Malaysia using a web-based system for learning Basic Computer Networks.The study suggested that the types of navigations had affected the control aspect, but not the focus, curiosity, and intrinsic interests.Students’ engagement from the context of focus, intrinsic interests and curiosity was similar in both linear and non-linear.These findings are further discussed from cultural perspectives of Malaysian students

Mining social network data for personalisation and privacy concerns: A case study of Facebook’s Beacon

This is the post-print version of the final published paper that is available from the link below.The popular success of online social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook is a hugely tempting resource of data mining for businesses engaged in personalised marketing. The use of personal information, willingly shared between online friends' networks intuitively appears to be a natural extension of current advertising strategies such as word-of-mouth and viral marketing. However, the use of SNS data for personalised marketing has provoked outrage amongst SNS users and radically highlighted the issue of privacy concern. This paper inverts the traditional approach to personalisation by conceptualising the limits of data mining in social networks using privacy concern as the guide. A qualitative investigation of 95 blogs containing 568 comments was collected during the failed launch of Beacon, a third party marketing initiative by Facebook. Thematic analysis resulted in the development of taxonomy of privacy concerns which offers a concrete means for online businesses to better understand SNS business landscape - especially with regard to the limits of the use and acceptance of personalised marketing in social networks

Progressive assessment of student engagement with web-based guided learning

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to investigate student engagement in guided web-based learning systems.It looks into students' engagement and their behavioral patterns in two types of guided learning systems (i.e. a fully- and a partially-guided).The research also aims to demonstrate how the engagement evolves from the beginning towards the end of the interactions; which enables analysis to be performed on the quality of engagement. Design/methodology/approach – An experimental study was conducted on 41 students from a public university in Malaysia using two web-based systems as the main learning tools.The students' engagement data were captured three times during the interactions and once at the end of the experimental study using student self-report.Findings – The main outcome of this study suggests that student engagement was changing over time either in positive or negative patterns.The directions of change in both types of guided learning were mainly influenced by the students' background of knowledge.Practical implications – This study demonstrates that student engagement is dynamic. Therefore, progressive assessment is a practical approach to obtain the engagement data which can be used to regulate and improve student engagement in web-based systems.As a result, an adaptive and intelligent web-based learning environment can be created. Originality/value – This research proposes a new approach to improve students' engagement in web-based instruction, that is, through a progressive assessment of their current experience