Preference based retrieval of information elements

Abstract

Spatial information systems like GIS assist a user in making a spatial decision by presenting information that supports the decision process. Planning a holiday via the Internet can be a daunting process. Decision-making is based on finding the relevant data sets in short time among an overwhelming amount of data sources. In many cases the user has to figure out how the presented information can fit the decision he has to make on his own. To address this problem a tourist would need tools to retrieve the spatial information according to his current preferences. The relevant data is determined as data elements describing facts corresponding to the tourist's preferences. The present work suggests a way how a user dealing with a tourist information system can indicate his preferences through the user interface. According to the suggested alternatives the user can change his preferences and generate a new set of alternatives. A feedback loop provides a tool that allows the user to explore the available alternatives. The work was motivated by classical dialog based booking processes between human operators, carried out on the telephone. We introduce the conceptual model of a user interface, which considers the agents preferences and describes the overall interaction process. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.