Personalized Presentation inWeb-Based Information
Systems
Institute of Informatics and Software Engineering
Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies
Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava
Michal Tvarožek, Michal Barla, Mária Bieliková
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Presentation outline
• Motivation
• What is the problem?
• Personalized presentation layer architecture
• Evaluation
• Summary
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Motivation
• Large open information spaces
• Navigation and search related problems
– “Lost in hyperspace” syndrome
– Many (irrelevant) search results
Adaptive WIS (web-based information systems)
– Few “standard” solutions
– New adaptive WIS = start from “square one”
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Adaptive WIS problems
• No standard software architecture available
• Used mostly for e-learning applications
• Existing reference models (Dexter, AHAM)
– Deal with mostly abstract stuff
– Ignore software development and reuse aspects
• HERA methodology focuses more on presentation than adaptation and user modeling
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
User modeling problems
• Automatic creation of a user model is difficult
• Logging without semantics– Hard-coded evaluation logic depends on a specific
domain and implementation
• Web log analysis yields bad results– Purely server-side approach
– Extensive pre-processing required
– Better suited for overall statistics gathering than the evaluation of individual users’ characteristics
• Sharing of user models between tools or applications requires common ground
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Goals
• Devise the architecture of an adaptive WIS based on the use of interconnected software tools
– Identify tool roles and interconnects
– Focus on extensibility and flexibility
– Support architecture/tool reuse for different application domains
– Stress interoperability and “common ground” between tools
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Architecture overview
Portal
HTMLfragments
Events
Presentation
Adaptation
Presentation tools
Presentation
Adaptation
Input / Feedback
Webbrowser
Server-sidelogging
Client-sidelogging
User characteristic
evaluation
EventsEvents
Presentationlayer
Personalizationlayer
User modelinglayer
Server ClientPersonalized presentation layer
Application logic layer
Data layer
Events
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Portal
• Facilitates user management tasks
– User registration
– User authentication and authorization
• Provides a single “global” user interface
– Ensures a common “look & feel”
– Integrates individual presentation tools as pluggable portlets that can be added, removed or reordered
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Architecture overview
Portal
HTMLfragments
Events
Presentation
Adaptation
Presentation tools
Presentation
Adaptation
Input / Feedback
Webbrowser
Server-sidelogging
Client-sidelogging
User characteristic
evaluation
EventsEvents
Presentationlayer
Personalizationlayer
User modelinglayer
Server ClientPersonalized presentation layer
Application logic layer
Data layer
Events
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Presentation tools
• Perform adaptive presentation of content
• Allow for the use of different views/perspectives suitable for individual users
– The same data can be viewed e.g. with a
• Faceted browser
• Cluster visualization tool
• Form-filling tool
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Portal
HTMLfragments
Events
Presentation
Adaptation
Presentation tools
Presentation
Adaptation
Input / Feedback
Webbrowser
Server-sidelogging
Client-sidelogging
User characteristic
evaluation
EventsEvents
Presentationlayer
Personalizationlayer
User modelinglayer
Server ClientPersonalized presentation layer
Application logic layer
Data layer
Events
Architecture overview
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Client-side logging
• Captures client-side events that would otherwise go unnoticed
– Hovering on items
– Java script interaction
– “Back” button
– Form filling actions (e.g. the order of fields)
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Architecture overview
Portal
HTMLfragments
Events
Presentation
Adaptation
Presentation tools
Presentation
Adaptation
Input / Feedback
Webbrowser
Server-sidelogging
Client-sidelogging
User characteristic
evaluation
EventsEvents
Presentationlayer
Personalizationlayer
User modelinglayer
Server ClientPersonalized presentation layer
Application logic layer
Data layer
Events
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Server-side logging
• Integrates event data from various sources
• Creates one continuous stream of events for– Each user
– Each user session
• Preserves the semantics of events supplied by individual tools;– Instead of GET www.x.com/overview.do?id=456&att=loc&r=33
– We get: <John>, <SelectRestriction>(<location>, <California>)
• Circumvents the tight coupling of presentation and log analysis tools in traditional approaches
• Makes the log data accessible to all user modeling tools
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Architecture overview
Portal
HTMLfragments
Events
Presentation
Adaptation
Presentation tools
Presentation
Adaptation
Input / Feedback
Webbrowser
Server-sidelogging
Client-sidelogging
User characteristic
evaluation
EventsEvents
Presentationlayer
Personalizationlayer
User modelinglayer
Server ClientPersonalized presentation layer
Application logic layer
Data layer
Events
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
User characteristics evaluation
• Continuously evaluates user event log data
– Estimates individual users’ characteristics
– Updates the user model
• Evaluates
– User navigation
– Implicit user feedback on presented content
– User behavior consistency or lack thereof
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Evaluation
• Within the context of projects– NAZOU (nazou.fiit.stuba.sk); domain: job offers
• Tools for Acquisition, Organization and Maintenance ofKnowledge in an Environment of Heterogeneous Information Resources
– MAPEKUS (mapekus.fiit.stuba.sk); domain: scientific publications
• Modeling and Acquisition, Processing and Employing Knowledge About User Activities in the Internet Hyperspace
• Project constraints– Implementation environment Java 5
– Presentation framework Apache Cocoon
– Ontological repository Sesame
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
How it works?
Server
LogAnalyzer
SemanticLog
Factic(other tools)3. Domain model
User model
7. Event
Client
[Events]
[Domain model][User model][User logs]
Click
Webbrowser
1. Request
JOP/P3
10. Response
Corporate Memory
Domain model
User model
Userlogs
8. User logs
2. Request
[Events]
Prescott
11. Response
4. Outputdescription
6. XHTMLfragment
9. Notify
5. Domain modelUser model
ConCom
[Call]
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
What can we do with it?
• Personalize facet layout
• Improve response time
• Reduce the number of necessary clicks
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Number of active facets
Cli
ck c
ou
nt
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Tim
e [s
]
Clicks with recommendation 6 5 5 4
Clicks with adaptation 11 10 10 9
Clicks without adaptation 9 9 9 9
Time with recommendation 45 36 45 61
Time with adaptation 63 141 193 296
Time without adaptation 301 301 301 301
1 facet 2 facets 3 facets 11 facets
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Key issues I.
• Interoperability and “common ground” between tools– Requires common information and semantics representation
Ontologies provide means for defining common semantics
• Domain, user and event ontology
• Automatic user model acquisition– Built-in comprehensive logging of user interaction with
semantics
• Client-side
• Server-side– Automatic event log evaluation
– Continuous user characteristics estimation
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Key issues II.
• Flexibility and extensibility
– Modular architecture composed of interconnected software tools
– Simultaneous support for the use and integration of multiple presentation/user modeling tools
• Reusability
– Generic domain independent tools for specific tasks
Sofsem 200722. 1. 2007 Tvarožek et al. Personalized
Presentation in Web-Based Information Systems
Summary
• Generic architecture of the personalized presentation layer of adaptive WIS
• Evaluation within projects
– NAZOU (nazou.fiit.stuba.sk) ~ job offers
– MAPEKUS (mapekus.fiit.stuba.sk) ~ publications
• Future work
– Analyze possibilities of tool orchestration
– Devise methods of cooperation between multiple tools used for the same task