The UM User Modelling Toolkit
Dr. Judy Kay
Visiting Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Basser Department of Computer Science
University of Sydney, Australia
judy@cs.wisc.edu
2:30 pm Fri. Oct. 7 in 2310 Computer Sciences and Statistics Bldg.
This talk describes a user modelling toolkit, um, that has
been used in a variety of systems: for a movie advisor, a
coaching system for a text editor (sam), a personalised news
service, and a World-Wide Web meta-hypertext that teaches C.
A common element in each of these tasks is the need for a
suitable model for information about the user, especially
their knowledge and preferences.
Some novel aspects of um derive from its underlying
philosophy of cooperative modelling with user access and
control. The talk describes this and its influence on um's
knowledge representation and reasoning in a noisy, uncertain
and changing task like user modelling.
Within the um toolkit, there are some unusual tools. This
talk concentrates on just two: the `viewer' that enables a
user to understand their own user model, including
justifications and explanations for its components; and the
`concept mapper' which interacts with users to elicit their
conceptual understanding.