What Is User Modeling?

Personalized system is software that can show different operating effects according to the information needs of different users, and the services provided by such software are personalized services. The core of the personalized system is user modeling, which is a model representation of the user's information needs. ^[1]

User modeling is the core of personalized systems. In a nutshell, user modeling is a representation of user information, which mainly includes three questions: what to model, how to model, and how to maintain the model.

User interest modeling is a complex process, which includes the collection and mining of user-related information, as well as the extraction and expression of user interests, as well as the organization and maintenance of long-term, recent, and immediate interests? The above aspects are interconnected and interact Together, they form a complete user modeling system. For example, the representation method adopted by the user interest model determines the information that must be recorded when information is collected, and also determines the organizational structure of long-term interest, recent interest, and instant interest. ^[1]

The modeling method includes three aspects: one is how to obtain useful information of the user; the other is the representation of the user model; the third is how to combine the first two aspects to generate the user's model.

User Modeling User Manual Custom Modeling

User-customized modeling refers to a user modeling method in which a user model is manually input or selected by a user himself. For example, the user enters a keyword list of interest, or selects a column of interest.

However, there are some shortcomings in the following aspects:

First, because the modeling process is completely dependent on the user, it is easy to reduce the user's enthusiasm for using the system; users are unwilling to participate in the training of the system, even if the user knows that training the system will bring benefits to himself.

Second, it is difficult for users to list the columns or keywords they are interested in comprehensively and accurately, which leads to inaccurate user models;

Third, when the user's interest changes, the user must re-enter the user model; the user-customized user model is static, which is inconsistent with the gradual nature of the user's interest.

User Modeling Example User Modeling

Example user modeling refers to a modeling method in which users provide examples related to their interests and their category attributes to build a user model. Because users have the most say in their own interests and preferences, the examples provided by users about their own interests can most accurately and accurately reflect the characteristics of the user's interests and preferences.

User Modeling Automatic User Modeling

Automatic user modeling refers to a modeling method that automatically builds a user model based on the user's browsing content and browsing behavior. The modeling process does not require the user to provide information actively. The main representatives of automatic user modeling are: WebWatcher of Carnegie Mellon University, ELFI of German National Research Center, Letizia of MIT, etc.

Automatic user modeling is actually an improved example acquisition method in the example user modeling method, which is transformed into an automatic example acquisition method that does not require user annotation. By clustering and categorizing the pages browsed by users, we can get the topics that users are interested in, so as to realize automatic modeling. In addition, Web log mining is also a way to achieve automatic user modeling.

Although automatic user modeling has the disadvantages that it is easy to introduce noise and is not conducive to building high-quality user models, automatic user modeling does not require users to provide information actively, does not cause interference to users, and is conducive to improving the ease of use of personalized services. And promote the development of personalized services. ^[2]