User-centered design for personalization

In chapter 1, I introduced the concept of personalization and showed how tailored electronic communication is the product of centuries of evolution. Personalization involves gearing communication towards an individual’s characteristics, preferences and context. User-Centered Design (UCD) was proposed as a means to achieve a good fit between personalized communication and the individual user. This means that design of personalization should include an initial focus on users and their tasks, studies should be conducted that focus on actual user behavior and perceptions, and finally, an iterative design approach should be applied. In this way, problematic issues related to specific, personalized usability issues, such as privacy or a need for control, can be prevented.\ud Chapter 2 addressed an early stage in the UCD process of personalization to determine the role of trust in the organization providing personalization, trust in the technology, and perceived controllability in relation to the intention of potential users to use online content personalization. Using an online questionnaire, 1,141 participants were demonstrated four common approaches to online content personalization and a non-personalized baseline condition with respect to a fictive municipality. We assessed participant perceptions of the aforementioned factors and determined their influence on the intention to use the different approaches to online content personalization. Trust in the organization appeared to play no role in the decision to use online content personalization. Trust in the technology had a moderate effect on the intention to use, while perceived controllability was overall the most important antecedent. When designing online content personalization, it is therefore most important to provide users with the option to control personalization. Next, users should be assured that they are interacting with an organization in a secure electronic environment.\ud The requirements engineering phase was focus of chapter 3. In that chapter, we proposed a user-centered approach to requirements engineering for personalized e-Government services and demonstrated its value by means of a case study. The approach utilized interviews and formulated requirements by focusing on concrete and measurable criteria, low-fidelity prototyping, and evaluating by means of a citizen walkthrough. The case study reaffirmed the importance of applying an iterative approach to design, as the translation of user input into system design may not align with the original characteristics, preferences and contexts of the user. Furthermore, using a citizen walkthrough, the proposed approach succeeded in making personalization understandable to participants, which is an important objective for evaluating personalization. Finally, the case study demonstrated that a multidisciplinary design team is a crucial aspect of creating personalized e-Government services.\ud In chapter 4, we reviewed literature that focused on user-centered evaluation of personalization (i.e., evaluations that include an assessment of subjective criteria or the identification of usability problems). The findings indicate that current user-centered evaluations, as reported in the scientific literature, are not well-aligned with the principles of UCD. Questionnaires appeared to be exceedingly popular, while methods that have been found to identify usability problems well, such as thinking-aloud techniques, are only used sparingly. Specific usability issues for personalization are only rarely a topic of investigation. In the last few years, however, an increasing number of publications have reported on evaluations that focus on acceptance, iterative design or system trust. This trend suggests that personalization researchers are becoming aware of the added value of user-centered evaluations and are starting to make it part of their common research practice.\ud Chapter 5 reported a comparison of the usefulness of three methods (i.e., interviews, questionnaires with open-ended questions and concurrent thinking-aloud techniques) for identifying usability issues in personalized systems. Thinking-aloud was the only method that uncovered all critical and serious problems related to personalization as well as usability problems not related to personalization. Furthermore, it was also the method that best elicited participant feedback on the perceived quality of personalized output. Comments on the specific usability issues for personalization were elicited best by the questionnaire. Therefore, when evaluating a personalized system in order to obtain input for redesign purposes, we recommend a combination of thinking-aloud techniques and questionnaires with open-ended questions that address specific usability issues in personalization

TAILOR: Patient-specific hybrid wearable systems for walking rehabilitation

Personalization of robotic exoskeletons for walking assistance to the end user is still a challenge for this technology. The TAILOR project aims to create hybrid and modular robotic-neuroprosthetic wearable systems that can be adapted to an individual patient. For that, a User-Centered Design approach and predictive dynamic simulation tools are conceived to support the design of the hybrid assistive technology.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::3 - Salut i BenestarPostprint (published version

A Web Content Management and Personalization Model Using One-to-One Strategy for Higher Educational Institutions

This research explored a Web content management and personalization model for higher educational institutions. Through a review of literature and data collected from users, it formulated a conceptual model for Web content management and personalization. The study used the Web site of School of Technology at Eastern Illinois University as a typical case from which to develop the model for higher educational institutions. Understanding the factors influencing user attitudes about the adoption of new Web technologies is extremely important. Such an understanding can help Web developers develop a theoretical framework for a Web model as well as identify its components. Cognizant of user-centered design principles, the study surveyed School of Technology students to assess their attitudes and expectations about applying one-to-one marketing strategy to the School\u27s Web site and to identify the content of the site. Based on the survey results, it formulated design guidelines that helped ascertain the one-to-one Web marketing strategy for the model. Finally, the study formulated a conceptual Web content management and personalization model in Unified Modeling Language formats

Evaluating the effectiveness of explanations for recommender systems : Methodological issues and empirical studies on the impact of personalization

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Towards personalization in digital libraries through ontologies

In this paper we describe a browsing and searching personalization system for digital libraries based on the use of ontologies for describing the relationships between all the elements which take part in a digital library scenario of use. The main goal of this project is to help the users of a digital library to improve their experience of use by means of two complementary strategies: first, by maintaining a complete history record of his or her browsing and searching activities, which is part of a navigational user profile which includes preferences and all the aspects related to community involvement; and second, by reusing all the knowledge which has been extracted from previous usage from other users with similar profiles. This can be accomplished in terms of narrowing and focusing the search results and browsing options through the use of a recommendation system which organizes such results in the most appropriate manner, using ontologies and concepts drawn from the semantic web field. The complete integration of the experience of use of a digital library in the learning process is also pursued. Both the usage and information organization can be also exploited to extract useful knowledge from the way users interact with a digital library, knowledge that can be used to improve several design aspects of the library, ranging from internal organization aspects to human factors and user interfaces. Although this project is still on an early development stage, it is possible to identify all the desired functionalities and requirements that are necessary to fully integrate the use of a digital library in an e-learning environment

Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European Higher Education Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and the additional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborative learning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels

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