Markus Stolze

Personalized Digital Television

This chapter presents the recommendation techniques applied in Personal Program Guide (PPG). This is a system generating personalized Electronic Program Guides for Digital TV. The PPGmanages a user model that stores the estimates of the individual user’s preferences for TV program categories. This model results from the integration of di¡erent preference acquisitionmodules that handle explicit user preferences, stereotypical information about TV viewers, and information about the user’s viewing behavior. The observation of the individual viewing behavior is particularly easy because the PPG runs on the set-top box and is deeply integrated with the TV playing and the video recording services o¡ered by that type of device.

User-centered design and business process modeling: cross road in rapid prototyping tools

Fast production of a solution is a necessity in the world of competitive IT consulting business today. In engagements where early user interface design mock-ups are needed to visualize proposed business processes, the need to quickly create UI becomes prominent very early in the process. Our work aims to speed up the UI design process, enabling rapid creation of low-fidelity UI design with traditional user-centered design thinking but different tooling concepts. This paper explains the approach and the rationale behind our model and tools. One key focal point is in leveraging business process models as a starting point of the UI design process. The other focal point is on using a model-driven approach with designer-centered tools to eliminate some design overheads, to help manage a large design space, and to cope with changes in requirements. We used examples from a real business engagement to derive and strengthen this work.

Soft navigation in electronic product catalogs

Abstract.Current electronic product catalogs support only hard navigation in the product list. Products or product categories are displayed only if they match a criterion that a user has specified explicitly as a constraint or implicitly by following a navigation link. Hard navigation is problematic if users want to express soft preferences instead of hard constraints. Users will make sub-optimal buying decisions if they mistake soft preferences for hard requirements and focus only on products that match all their preferences. Soft navigation is an alternative means to navigate product catalogs. Users express preferences which are used to evaluate products and display them in such a way that higher-scoring products are more visible than lower-scoring products. This paper presents a product scoring catalog (PSC) that supports soft navigation and allows users to express preferences and rate their importance by following a set of rules. The paper closes by outlining possible extensions to PSC and indicating research issues related to soft navigation product catalogs.

Utility-Based Decision Tree Optimization: A Framework for Adaptive Interviewing

An emerging practice in e-commerce systems is to conduct interviews with buyers in order to identify their needs. The goal of such an interview is to determine sets of items that match implicit requirements. Decision trees structure the interview process by defining which question follows a given answer. One problem related to decision trees is that changes in the selling strategy or product mix require complex tree restructuring efforts. In this paper we present a framework that represents the selling strategy as a set of parameters, reflecting the preferences of sellers and buyers. This representation of the strategy can be used to generate optimized decision trees in an iterative process, which exploits information about historical buyer behavior. Furthermore, the framework also supports advanced optimization strategies such as dynamic parameter adaptation and exit risk minimization.

A Matchmaking Component for the Discovery of Agreement and Negotiation Spaces in Electronic Markets

This paper presents the design of an extended matchmaking component for electronic markets, which is able to identify negotiable agreements and the issues that are subject to the negotiation, in the case where basic matchmaking fails to find agreements that satisfy the constraints of the seller and the buyer. The foundation for this functionality is the introduction of negotiable constraints within the offer specification process. The extended matchmaking component complements our SilkRoad design and implementation framework for electronic negotiations. This framework also features other negotiation service components such as a mediation service, which may use the feedback from the extended matchmaking operation on agreement candidates and negotiation spaces, to suggest fair agreements on the basis of the Adjusted Winner algorithm for dispute resolution.

Soft Navigation in Product Catalogs

Current electronic product catalogs support only Hard Navigation in the product list. Products or product categories are displayed only if they match a criterion that a user has specified explicitly as a constraint or implicitly by following a navigation link. Hard navigation is problematic if users want to express soft preferences instead of hard constraints. Users will make sub-optimal buying decisions if they mistake soft preferences for hard requirements and focus only on products that match all their preferences. Soft Navigation is an alternative means to navigate product catalogs. Users express preferences which are used to evaluate products and display them in such a way that higher-scoring products are more visible than lower-scoring products. This paper presents a product scoring catalog (PSC) that supports soft navigation and allows users to express preferences and rate their importance by following a set of rules. The paper closes by outlining possible extensions to PSC and indicating research issues related to soft navigation product catalogs.

From domain modeling to collaborative domain construction

Domain-oriented systems offer many potential benefits for end-users such as more intuitive interfaces, better task support, and knowledge-based assistance. A key challenge for system developers constructing domain-oriented systems is determining what the current domain is and what the future domain should be; i.e. what entities should the system embody and how should they be represented. Detennining an appropriate domain model is challenging because domains are not static entities that objectively exist, but instead they are dynamic entities that are constructed over time by a community of practice. New software development models and new computational tools are needed that support these communities to create initial models of the domain and to evolve these models over time to meet changing needs and practices. We describe a specific software development model and computational tools that enable domain practitioners to participate in domain construction processes.

Feature-Oriented vs. Needs-Oriented Product Access for Non-Expert-Online Shoppers

Most online shops today organise their product catalogue in a feature-oriented way. This can cause problems for shoppers who have only limited knowledge of product features. An alternative is to organizing product information in a needs-oriented way. Here possible ways of using the product build the focus of attention. In this study we compared reported preference of catalogue access of non-expert shoppers when confronted with either feature-oriented or needs-oriented access to a catalogue of digital cameras.

Simple Obligation and Right Model (SORM) – for the Runtime Management of Electronic Service Contracts

Online purchase and delivery of goods and services requires an electronic contracting process. Formalization of contractual content enables automatic delivery of services and monitoring of the terms and conditions of the contract at service runtime. The Simple Obligation and Right Model (SORM) provides an abstract, domain-independent model of contractual content. Model instances can be interpreted and managed by applications involved in checking contractual entitlements and delivering and supervising a service in compliance with contractual rights and obligations. It captures the main types of rights and obligations and deals with their dynamics during the life-time of a contract.

Effective product selection in electronic catalogs

Product catalogs are crucial for electronic commerce on the Internet, but it is still a challenging task for casual users to perform effective product selection. Recently, a promising technique for product selection has been proposed: Incremental restriction on interactive tables. It allows customers to build complex queries with a few mouse clicks, but still to browse the available products at any stage. This paper describes effective and ineffective strategies of users working with this technique. These strategies were identified in a study with casual users.