14,549 research outputs found
Personalized Ranking in eCommerce Search
We address the problem of personalization in the context of eCommerce search.
Specifically, we develop personalization ranking features that use in-session
context to augment a generic ranker optimized for conversion and relevance. We
use a combination of latent features learned from item co-clicks in historic
sessions and content-based features that use item title and price.
Personalization in search has been discussed extensively in the existing
literature. The novelty of our work is combining and comparing content-based
and content-agnostic features and showing that they complement each other to
result in a significant improvement of the ranker. Moreover, our technique does
not require an explicit re-ranking step, does not rely on learning user
profiles from long term search behavior, and does not involve complex modeling
of query-item-user features. Our approach captures item co-click propensity
using lightweight item embeddings. We experimentally show that our technique
significantly outperforms a generic ranker in terms of Mean Reciprocal Rank
(MRR). We also provide anecdotal evidence for the semantic similarity captured
by the item embeddings on the eBay search engine.Comment: Under Revie
Theory-based user modeling for personalized interactive information retrieval
In an effort to improve users’ search experiences during their information seeking process, providing a personalized information retrieval system is proposed to be one of the effective approaches. To personalize the search systems requires a good understanding of the users. User modeling has been approved to be a good method for learning and representing users. Therefore many user modeling studies have been carried out and some user models have been developed. The majority of the user modeling studies applies inductive approach, and only small number of studies employs deductive approach. In this paper, an EISE (Extended Information goal, Search strategy and Evaluation threshold) user model is proposed, which uses the deductive approach based on psychology theories and an existing user model. Ten users’ interactive search log obtained from the real search engine is applied to validate the proposed user model. The preliminary validation results show that the EISE model can be applied to identify different types of users. The search preferences of the different user types can be applied to inform interactive search system design and development
Personalizing Session-based Recommendations with Hierarchical Recurrent Neural Networks
Session-based recommendations are highly relevant in many modern on-line
services (e.g. e-commerce, video streaming) and recommendation settings.
Recently, Recurrent Neural Networks have been shown to perform very well in
session-based settings. While in many session-based recommendation domains user
identifiers are hard to come by, there are also domains in which user profiles
are readily available. We propose a seamless way to personalize RNN models with
cross-session information transfer and devise a Hierarchical RNN model that
relays end evolves latent hidden states of the RNNs across user sessions.
Results on two industry datasets show large improvements over the session-only
RNNs
Modeling Interdependent and Periodic Real-World Action Sequences
Mobile health applications, including those that track activities such as
exercise, sleep, and diet, are becoming widely used. Accurately predicting
human actions is essential for targeted recommendations that could improve our
health and for personalization of these applications. However, making such
predictions is extremely difficult due to the complexities of human behavior,
which consists of a large number of potential actions that vary over time,
depend on each other, and are periodic. Previous work has not jointly modeled
these dynamics and has largely focused on item consumption patterns instead of
broader types of behaviors such as eating, commuting or exercising. In this
work, we develop a novel statistical model for Time-varying, Interdependent,
and Periodic Action Sequences. Our approach is based on personalized,
multivariate temporal point processes that model time-varying action
propensities through a mixture of Gaussian intensities. Our model captures
short-term and long-term periodic interdependencies between actions through
Hawkes process-based self-excitations. We evaluate our approach on two activity
logging datasets comprising 12 million actions taken by 20 thousand users over
17 months. We demonstrate that our approach allows us to make successful
predictions of future user actions and their timing. Specifically, our model
improves predictions of actions, and their timing, over existing methods across
multiple datasets by up to 156%, and up to 37%, respectively. Performance
improvements are particularly large for relatively rare and periodic actions
such as walking and biking, improving over baselines by up to 256%. This
demonstrates that explicit modeling of dependencies and periodicities in
real-world behavior enables successful predictions of future actions, with
implications for modeling human behavior, app personalization, and targeting of
health interventions.Comment: Accepted at WWW 201
A Personalized System for Conversational Recommendations
Searching for and making decisions about information is becoming increasingly
difficult as the amount of information and number of choices increases.
Recommendation systems help users find items of interest of a particular type,
such as movies or restaurants, but are still somewhat awkward to use. Our
solution is to take advantage of the complementary strengths of personalized
recommendation systems and dialogue systems, creating personalized aides. We
present a system -- the Adaptive Place Advisor -- that treats item selection as
an interactive, conversational process, with the program inquiring about item
attributes and the user responding. Individual, long-term user preferences are
unobtrusively obtained in the course of normal recommendation dialogues and
used to direct future conversations with the same user. We present a novel user
model that influences both item search and the questions asked during a
conversation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system in significantly
reducing the time and number of interactions required to find a satisfactory
item, as compared to a control group of users interacting with a non-adaptive
version of the system
Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead
Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge
technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user
(e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed
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