Wizard building in an abstract portal framework

This report investigates a particular way in which enterprise portals can support the working life of their users. Through monitoring a user's behaviour and observing archetypal sequences of actions, the system constructs abstract templates of tools that assist him to carry out such sequences efficiently and easily in the future. We call these new tools "wizards" after the utilities introduced by Microsoft into their applications and operating systems, designed to guide users through potentially complex tasks such as constructing graphs in Excel or setting up the computer to access the Internet. At the heart of the process lies a re-programmable rule-base that encodes the principles by which action records are to be assembled into intelligible generic patterns of working practice, and thence converted into templates of new wizard tools that provide direct support for those patterns

Interactive multi-attribute decision making, based on quadratic programming

In order to make a decision in the face of multiple objectives it is necessary to know the relative importance of the different objectives. Yet, it is often very difficult to specify a set of precise weights before possible alternatives solutions are known. In this paper, we present an interactive, iterative method for arriving at an acceptable solution. The decision maker gradually discerns what is achievable and adjusts his aspirations and (implicitly) the specification of weights and trade-offs between his objectives, in the light of what he learns. To aid the decision maker's cognition and to allow him to express his wishes in a natural way, we employ an intuitive interface, based on the parallel coordinates method of displaying and specifying points in multidimensional space