@inproceedings{ubo_mods_00167803, author = {Ma, Yuan and Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Mixed-Modality Interaction in Conversational Recommender Systems}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th Joint Workshop on Interfaces and Human Decision Making for Recommender Systems}, series = {CEUR Workshop Proceedings}, year = {2021}, publisher = {}, address = {}, volume = {2948}, pages = {21–37}, keywords = {Conversational Recommender Systems; User Interface; Preference Elicitation; Critique-based Recommendations}, abstract = {Recent advances in natural language processing have made modern chatbots and Conversational Recommender Systems (CRS) increasingly intelligent, enabling them to handle more complex user inputs. Still, the interaction with a CRS is often tedious and error-prone. Especially when using written text as the form of conversation, the interaction is often less efficient in comparison to conventional GUI- style interaction. To keep the flexibility and mixed-initiative style of language-based conversation while leveraging the efficiency and simplicity of interacting through graphical widgets, we investigate the de- sign space of integrating GUI elements into text-based conversations. While simple response buttons have already been used in chatbots, the full range of such mixed-modality interactions has not yet been investigated in existing research. We propose two design dimensions along which integrations can be defined and analyze their applicability for preference elicitation and for critiquing the CRS’s responses at different levels. We report a user study in which we investigated user preferences and perceived usability of different techniques based on video prototypes.}, note = {OA platinum}, issn = {1613-0073}, url = {http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2948/paper2.pdf}, language = {en} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00167689, author = {Kleemann, Timm and Wagner, Magdalena and Loepp, Benedikt and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Modeling User Interaction at the Convergence of Filtering Mechanisms, Recommender Algorithms and Advisory Components}, booktitle = {Mensch Und Computer 2021 – Tagungsband}, year = {2021}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, pages = {531–543}, keywords = {Human factors; User experience; User modeling; Search interfaces; Recommender systems}, isbn = {978-1-4503-8645-6}, doi = {10.1145/3473856}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3473856.3473859?cid=87958660357}, language = {en}, abstract = {A variety of methods is used nowadays to reduce the complexity of product search on e-commerce platforms, allowing users, for example, to specify exactly the features a product should have, but also, just to follow the recommendations automatically generated by the system. While such decision aids are popular with system providers, research to date has mostly focused on individual methods rather than their combination. To close this gap, we propose to support users in choosing the right method for the current situation. As a first step, we report in this paper a user study with a fictitious online shop in which users were able to flexibly use filter mechanisms, rely on recommendations, or follow the guidance of a dialog-based product advisor. We show that from the analysis of the interaction behavior, a model can be derived that allows predicting which of these decision aids is most useful depending on the user’s situation, and how this is affected by demographics and personality.} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00156892, author = {Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Distribution sliders: Visualizing data distributions in range selection sliders}, booktitle = {Conference on "Mensch und Computer"}, series = {ACM International Conference Proceeding Series}, year = {2020}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)}, address = {New York}, pages = {67–78}, isbn = {9781450375405}, doi = {10.1145/3404983.3405512}, abstract = {Sliders are often used to enable users to easily enter preferences for continuous data. Although efforts have already been made to enrich and improve these interaction tools with additional information and visualizations, only rather basic variants of sliders are commonly used in online shops or databases. However, these sliders often provide users only with very limited information about underlying data.We describe and evaluate three different slider designs, which enrich the tools with information in various ways, enabling users to efficiently explore the space of available items and to choose items in an informed manner. In one of the described slider designs we propose a new approach that integrates item recommendations directly into the slider, enabling users to see suitable items within the selection tool. In two user studies we show that these enhancements, both visualizations and recommendations, are powerful methods to directly support users in their searches.} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00148660, author = {Donkers, Tim and Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, editor = {Paternò, Fabio and Oliver, Nuria}, title = {Explaining Recommendations by Means of Aspect-Based Transparent Memories}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces}, year = {2020}, publisher = {The Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY}, pages = {166–176}, isbn = {978-1-4503-7118-6}, doi = {10.1145/3377325.3377520}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3377325.3377520}, abstract = {Recommender Systems have seen substantial progress in terms of algorithmic sophistication recently. Yet, the systems mostly act as black boxes and are limited in their capacity to explain why an item is recommended. In many cases recommendations methods are employed in scenarios where users not only rate items, but also convey their opinion on various relevant aspects, for instance by the means of textual reviews. Such user-generated content can serve as a useful source for deriving explanatory information to increase system intelligibility and, thereby, the user’s understanding. We propose a recommendation and explanation method that exploits the comprehensiveness of textual data to make the underlying criteria and mechanisms that lead to a recommendation more transparent. Concretely, the method incorporates neural memories that store aspect-related opinions extracted from raw review data. We apply attention mechanisms to transparently write and read information from memory slots. Besides customary offline experiments, we conducted an extensive user study. The results indicate that our approach achieves a higher overall quality of explanations compared to a state-of-the-art baseline. Utilizing Structural Equation Modeling, we additionally reveal three linked key factors that constitute explanation quality: Content adequacy, presentation adequacy, and linguistic adequacy.} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00142455, author = {Loepp, Benedikt and Donkers, Tim and Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Impact of Consuming Suggested Items on the Assessment of Recommendations in User Studies on Recommender Systems}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI ’19)}, year = {2019}, publisher = {IJCAI Organization}, pages = {6201–6205}, keywords = {Recommender Systems}, doi = {10.24963/ijcai.2019/863}, url = {https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2019/863}, abstract = {User studies are increasingly considered important in research on recommender systems. Although participants typically cannot consume any of the recommended items, they are often asked to assess the quality of recommendations and of other aspects related to user experience by means of questionnaires. Not being able to listen to recommended songs or to watch suggested movies, might however limit the validity of the obtained results. Consequently, we have investigated the effect of consuming suggested items. In two user studies conducted in different domains, we showed that consumption may lead to differences in the assessment of recommendations and in questionnaire answers. Apparently, adequately measuring user experience is in some cases not possible without allowing users to consume items. On the other hand, participants sometimes seem to approximate the actual value of recommendations reasonably well depending on domain and provided information.} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00139552, author = {Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Integration of Dialog-based Product Advisors into Filter Systems}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Conference on Mensch und Computer}, series = {ACM International Conference Proceeding Series}, year = {2019}, publisher = {ACM Press}, address = {New York}, pages = {67–77}, keywords = {Dialogbasierte Produktberater, Filtersysteme}, isbn = {978-1-4503-7198-8}, doi = {10.1145/3340764.3340786}, abstract = { Different techniques such as search functions or recommendation components are used today to support the often complex product search on the Internet. Faceted filter systems that successively limit the result set according to the set filter settings have proven to be quite successful. However, this method requires clear objectives and domain knowledge on the part of the users. As an alternative, conversational product advisors who select suitable products on the basis of a sequence of questions have gained more importance in recent times, whereby the questions are based more on the tasks and application scenarios of the users than on the technical properties of the products. However, there is currently a lack of approaches that integrate filter systems and conversational advisors in a meaningful and closely coupled way. In this paper an integrated approach is presented, where users can switch between filter systems and advisory dialogues, whereby selection actions in one component have a consistent and transparent effect on the other component and can be further adjusted there. The aim is to better support users with different levels of knowledge of the product type concerned. We describe the requirements for such integrated systems resulting from our approach and report on a user study in which the user behavior and the subjective evaluation were examined in a prototypical implementation.} } @inproceedings{ubo_mods_00116566, author = {Loepp, Benedikt and Donkers, Tim and Kleemann, Timm and Ziegler, Jürgen}, title = {Impact of Item Consumption on Assessment of Recommendations in User Studies}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th ACM Conference on Recommender Systems (RecSys ’18)}, year = {2018}, publisher = {ACM}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, pages = {49–53}, keywords = {User Studies}, isbn = {978-1-4503-5901-6}, doi = {10.1145/3240323.3240375}, url = {https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3240323.3240375?cid=87958660357}, abstract = {In user studies of recommender systems, participants typically cannot consume the recommended items. Still, they are asked to assess recommendation quality and other aspects related to user experience by means of questionnaires. Without having listened to recommended songs or watched suggested movies, however, this might be an error-prone task, possibly limiting validity of results obtained in these studies. In this paper, we investigate the effect of actually consuming the recommended items. We present two user studies conducted in different domains showing that in some cases, differences in the assessment of recommendations and in questionnaire results occur. Apparently, it is not always possible to adequately measure user experience without allowing users to consume items. On the other hand, depending on domain and provided information, participants sometimes seem to approximate the actual value of recommendations reasonably well.} }