Engineering information systems towards facilitating scrutable and configurable adaptation

Abstract

End users of Adaptive Hypermedia Systems (AHS) receive an experience that has been tailored towards their specific needs. Several AHS have produced favourable results showing benefits to the user experience [2]. However, the nature of AHS is that they tend to operate across a focused and fixed domain with a single body of content that is known a priori. This approach limits the user’s freedom to choose other information sources and restricts the potential impact an adaptive systems may have. To provide more flexibility several service orientated approaches extending traditional AHS architectures have been introduced. This Ph.D. work proposes the re-engineering of information systems in order to support the portability of adaptive services, thus enabling them to personalize any information system on behalf of the user. This approach espouses user empowerment through this mobility and through a highly scrutable and configurable approach to such service-oriented adaptation.