Minimalist User Modelling in a Complex Commercial Software System

  • Authors:
  • Linda Strachan;John Anderson;Murray Sneesby;Mark Evans

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Canada;Department of Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Canada;Emerging Information Systems Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada;Emerging Information Systems Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

  • Venue:
  • User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

While user modelling has produced many research-based systems, comparatively little progress has been made in the development of user modelling components for commercial software systems. The development of minimalist user modelling components which are simplified to provide “just enough” assistance to a user through a pragmatic adaptive user interface is seen by many as an important step toward this goal. This paper describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a minimalist user modelling component for the Tax and Investment Management Strategizer (TIMS), a complex commercial software system for financial management. This user modelling component manages several levels of adaptations designed to assist novice users in dealing with the complexity of this software package. Important issues and considerations for the development of user modelling components for commercial software systems and the evaluation of such systems in commercial settings are also discussed.