Adaptive Help for e-mail Users

This paper describes a graphical user interface that provides intelligent help to the users of an emailing system. The graphical user interface is called Intelligent Mailer (I-Mailer). I-Mailer monitors users while they work; in case a user is believed to have made a mistake, the system intervenes automatically and offers advice. In order to provide individualised help, the system keeps information about each user interacting with the system. This information is maintained centrally on a server based on Web Services. The main characteristic of Web Services is their strong reliance on web standards when they interact with the applications that invoke them. The Server keeps user models for every individual interacting with the client application. In case the Server has not gathered enough information about a particular user, it consults a library of stereotypes and acquires some default assumptions about the user.