Preface to the special issue on ubiquitous user modeling and user-adapted interaction

摘要

Today, computer systems are an integral part of almost every service we use and many devices we rely on in daily life. For example, we may interact directly with devices such as ATMs, information kiosks or ticket machines or with online services for movie rental or shopping. Alternatively many services operate in the background, to support activities such as food ordering, medical treatment, flight booking and boarding and many more. Such services have the potential to be personalized to users' preferences and needs in ways that make them more friendly and useful. To achieve this, systems need knowledge of who is using them or possibly "a target user". However, it is impractical to repeatedly ask users for their preferences and needs; that would be time consuming for the user, inefficient and irritating. In addition, services are now delivered everywhere and in changing environments, i.e. the context of use can vary in terms of changing devices, Internet connectivity and location, along with sensed, inferred or implicit inputs (Quigley 2009). In short, we are approaching an era of truly ubiquitous personalization.