An Interactive Exploratory System with Real-Time Preference Elicitation

Introduction Current proposals for preference-based information access [4] seem to ignore that users should be acquainted with the information space and the available choices for describing effectively their preferences. Furthermore, users rarely formulate complex (preference or plain) queries, because it is a laborious and difficult task for them. We will demonstrate a system for interactive exploration of multi-dimensional and hierarchical information spaces, enriched with actions that allow users to dynamically express their preferences, based on the preference framework described in [5]. Specifically, the system supports progressive preference elicitation, inherited preferences with scope-based resolution of conflicts, and preference composition over multi-dimensional and hierarchical information spaces. We argue that such functionality can ease the interaction and speed up the restriction of the focus to those parts of the information space that the user is interested in.