The Evaluation of Adaptive and User-Adaptive Systems: A Review

Abstract

A current problem with the research of adaptive systems is the inconsistency of evaluation applied to the adaptive systems. However, evaluating an adaptive system is a difficult task due to the complexity of such systems. Evaluators need to ensure correct evaluation methods and measurement metrics are used. This paper reviews a variety of evaluation techniques applied in adaptive and user-adaptive systems. More specifically, it focuses on the user-centred evaluation of adaptive systems such as personalised recommender systems and adaptive information retrieval systems. The review tackles the question of ‘How have user-centred evaluations of adaptive and user-adaptive systems been conducted and how can these evaluation practices be improved?’ Based on the analysed results of the: (a) evaluation approaches, (b) user-centred evaluation techniques, and (c) evaluation metrics, we propose an evaluation framework for end-user experience in evaluating adaptive systems (EFEx).