User Satisfaction with Personalised Internet Applications

The study focuses on user satisfaction with websites and personalised internet applications in particular. The abundance of information on the web is increasing more and more. Therefore, the significance of websites targeting the users’ preferences, like personalised Internet applications, is rising. The aim of this study was to find out which factors determine user satisfaction with personalised internet applications. Factors like the usefulness of the information or trust towards how personal information is handled were considered. A large-scale user survey evaluating three internet applications (from the travel, e-learning and real estate domains) was conducted. Expert opinions were collected to complement the results and provide insights from users’ and experts’ points of views

Psychological elements explaining the consumer's adoption and use of a website recommendation system: A theoretical framework proposal

The purpose of this paper is to understand, with an emphasis on the psychological perspective of the research problem, the consumer's adoption and use of a certain web site recommendation system as well as the main psychological outcomes involved. The approach takes the form of theoretical modelling. Findings: A conceptual model is proposed and discussed. A total of 20 research propositions are theoretically analyzed and justified. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical discussion developed here is not empirically validated. This represents an opportunity for future research. Practical implications: The ideas extracted from the discussion of the conceptual model should be a help for recommendation systems designers and web site managers, so that they may be more aware, when working with such systems, of the psychological process consumers undergo when interacting with them. In this regard, numerous practical reflections and suggestions are presented

Incomodando consumidores: quando agentes de recomendação não facilitam a nossa vida realmente

Intelligent systems have been used in different types of websites with the intention of creating personalized messages and understanding consumers’ needs more deeply. They are supposed to facilitate the decision-making process, make internet browsing easier and give users a sense of social feeling and personalization. So far, research in the field has focused attention on the positive aspects of using these systems. Little effort has been made, however, to try to recognize and correct situations in which they do not perform so well. This work is the result of an exploratory research destined to understand the broadness of the concept of failure in personalized environments as well as its antecedents and consequents. Based on the critical incident technique, we collected the opinion of 86 subjects in a multicultural environment and used their responses to elaborate a comprehensive framework of recommendation failure considering the different motivations for Internet use. Keywords: personalization, online shopping, recommendation agents, recommendation failure.Sistemas inteligentes têm sido usados em diferentes tipos de websites com a intenção de criar mensagens personalizadas e de entender as necessidades dos consumidores com mais profundidade. Eles supostamente facilitam o processo de tomada de decisão, tornam a navegação mais fácil e dão aos usuários uma sensação de trato social e personalização. Até agora, a pesquisa na área tem focado nos aspectos positivos de usar tais sistemas. Pouco esforço tem sido feito, entretanto, para tentar reconhecer e corrigir situações nas quais eles não apresentam um bom desempenho. Este trabalho é o resultado de uma pesquisa exploratória destinada a entender a amplitude do conceito de falha em ambientes personalizados, assim como seus antecedentes e consequentes. Baseados na técnica do incidente crítico, coletamos a opinião de 86 participantes em um ambiente multicultural e usamos suas respostas para elaborar um framework abrangente para a falha em recomendação, considerando as diferentes motivações para o uso da internet.Palavras-chave: personalização, compra on-line, agentes de recomendação, falha na recomendação

User Satisfaction with Personalised Internet Applications

The study focuses on user satisfaction with websites and personalised internet applications in particular. The abundance of information on the web is increasing more and more. Therefore, the significance of websites targeting the users’ preferences, like personalised Internet applications, is rising. The aim of this study was to find out which factors determine user satisfaction with personalised internet applications. Factors like the usefulness of the information or trust towards how personal information is handled were considered. A large-scale user survey evaluating three internet applications (from the travel, e-learning and real estate domains) was conducted. Expert opinions were collected to complement the results and provide insights from users’ and experts’ points of views

Multi-list Food Recommender Systems for Healthier Choices

Recipe websites are a popular destination for home cooks to discover new recipes and find what to cook. However, the most popular way of recommending recipes to users is trough similarity and popularity-based recommendations, which previous research has shown tend to be unhealthy. Building upon knowledge on how diverse sets of options increases satisfaction, this thesis investigates whether a multi-list recommender interface can support healthier food choices compared to traditional single-list interfaces, as well as increase choice satisfaction. As diverse set of options may introduce choice overload to users, explanations were investigated in terms of how they affect user evaluation with regards to choice difficulty, perceived diversity and understandability. A developed recommender system was used in a online study (N = 366), where users could select recipes from recommendations, as well as answering short questionnaires regarding their choices. The analysis showed that a multi-list recommender system was not able to support healthier food choices. However, users who interacted with the multi-list interface found it more satisfactory compared to single-list users. No significant evidence was found that explanations could mitigate choice difficulty. This thesis provides novel work on the utilization of multi-list recommender systems with explanations in the food recommender domain, which can further be expanded with considering other factors such including personalized recommendations in the multi-list interface.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing

Exploratory Browsing

In recent years the digital media has influenced many areas of our life. The transition from analogue to digital has substantially changed our ways of dealing with media collections. Today‟s interfaces for managing digital media mainly offer fixed linear models corresponding to the underlying technical concepts (folders, events, albums, etc.), or the metaphors borrowed from the analogue counterparts (e.g., stacks, film rolls). However, people‟s mental interpretations of their media collections often go beyond the scope of linear scan. Besides explicit search with specific goals, current interfaces can not sufficiently support the explorative and often non-linear behavior. This dissertation presents an exploration of interface design to enhance the browsing experience with media collections. The main outcome of this thesis is a new model of Exploratory Browsing to guide the design of interfaces to support the full range of browsing activities, especially the Exploratory Browsing. We define Exploratory Browsing as the behavior when the user is uncertain about her or his targets and needs to discover areas of interest (exploratory), in which she or he can explore in detail and possibly find some acceptable items (browsing). According to the browsing objectives, we group browsing activities into three categories: Search Browsing, General Purpose Browsing and Serendipitous Browsing. In the context of this thesis, Exploratory Browsing refers to the latter two browsing activities, which goes beyond explicit search with specific objectives. We systematically explore the design space of interfaces to support the Exploratory Browsing experience. Applying the methodology of User-Centered Design, we develop eight prototypes, covering two main usage contexts of browsing with personal collections and in online communities. The main studied media types are photographs and music. The main contribution of this thesis lies in deepening the understanding of how people‟s exploratory behavior has an impact on the interface design. This thesis contributes to the field of interface design for media collections in several aspects. With the goal to inform the interface design to support the Exploratory Browsing experience with media collections, we present a model of Exploratory Browsing, covering the full range of exploratory activities around media collections. We investigate this model in different usage contexts and develop eight prototypes. The substantial implications gathered during the development and evaluation of these prototypes inform the further refinement of our model: We uncover the underlying transitional relations between browsing activities and discover several stimulators to encourage a fluid and effective activity transition. Based on this model, we propose a catalogue of general interface characteristics, and employ this catalogue as criteria to analyze the effectiveness of our prototypes. We also present several general suggestions for designing interfaces for media collections