Preferences in Interactive Systems: Technical Challenges and Case Studies

merce and internet media, has coincided with growing recognition that many of the tasks people perform with computers can be performed better when the application adapts to its user. A popular example is Netflix, which gives customized movie recommendations to each user, using past movie ratings of the user and his or her friends. Netflix and other preference-aware interactive systems share the common aim of aiding the user in carrying out tasks—from finding a product to editing a document—by eliciting preferences from the user, inferring a preference model, and using the model to decide when and how to take action. The variety of preference-aware interactive applications includes recommender systems (such as Netflix or Amazon.com) that suggest items based on the user’s similarity to other users or on previously viewed items, conversational systems that interact with the user in a simplified dialogue to perform a task, interfaces that adapt to the user’s preferences and situation, and personal agents that can proactively support the user, modeling his or her needs and desires. In this article we review characteristic examples of intelligent, preference-aware interactive systems, survey the major questions, challenges and approaches with respect to preference representation, reasoning, and explanation and with respect to interactivity and task performed, and give an outlook on the potential of these systems. Throughout, we illustrate that designing a successful, adoptable system requires more than simply selecting the best form of representation, explanation, and reasoning. It requires a cohesive design that ensures the perceived benefits from using preferences significantly exceed the perceived costs of eliciting them. The interactivity of applications varies in nature, extent, modalities, and manifestation, as much as applications vary in their domains. Despite this diversity, the interactivity literature provides guidelines for designing an intelligent, interactive system (Horvitz 1999). Articles