Alfred Kobsa
Selected
Research Projects
Cooperation Awareness and Privacy
This
project aims at analyzing privacy and awareness needs of [distributed]
workgroups, and at supporting workgroups in balancing the demand for
awareness information with individual privacy preferences.
| Researchers |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Sameer
Patil (Ph.D. student)
Doree Seligmann and Ajita John, Avaya Research
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| Duration: |
2002-2010 |
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| Funding: |
NSF
("mid-size" ITR grant)
NSF (for
collaboration with the European PRIME
project)
NSF (large HCC grant)
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| Results: |
J25 J26, J27, C34, C36, C37, C42, C46, C52, C53, B17, B23, W21, W27, O15
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Privacy as a Design
Requirement for Personalized Systems
Privacy demands of Internet users and international (and future
national) privacy legislation have an impact on the collection of
personal data in web-based systems. This project studies specifically
the impacts on "personalized" web-based systems, which cater their
interaction to each individual user, collect considerable amounts of
personal data for this purpose, and "lay them in stock" for possible
future adaptation. The project analyzes and documents these privacy
requirements and provides solutions for the software architecture and
the user interface of personalized systems to cater to privacy
constraints of each individual user and their jurisdictions.
| Researchers: |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Yang Wang (Ph.D. student)
Max Teltzrow
(visiting Ph.D. student)
Zhaoqi "Stella" Chen (Ph.D. student)
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| Duration: |
2001 - 2010
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| Funding: |
CRITO
(2001-03), NSF (since
July 2003), Humboldt
Foundation (since Oct. 2004, for collaboration with Humboldt
University), Google Research Award
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| Results: |
J17,
J23, C25, C37,
C38, C43, C47,
B15, B16, B20,
B21, W15, W16, W17, W18, W19 , W22, W25,
O32
Catalog of requirements imposed by
international privacy laws
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Privacy through
Pseudonymity in User-Adaptive Systems
Adaptive systems are generally better able to cater to users the
more data
their user modeling systems collect and process about them. This
project
analyzes security requirements to guarantee privacy in user-adaptive
systems
and explores ways to keep users anonymous whilst fully preserving
personalized
interaction with them. User anonymization in personalized systems goes
beyond
current models in that not only users must remain anonymous but also
the
user modeling system that maintains their personal data. Moreover,
users'
trust in anonymity can be expected to lead to more extensive and frank
interaction,
hence to more and better data about the user, and thus to better
personalization.
A reference model for pseudonymous and secure user modeling has been
developed
and implemented that meets many of the proposed requirements.
Success Factors of
Information Visualization Systems
Research in information visualization aims at
leveraging human perceptual abilities for data analysis, by presenting
information not as numbers and text but in visual form. Effective
visual displays must therefore be designed in such a way that users can
easily obtain an overview of the data, spot outliers,
patterns and correlations, and see the changes that will occur if some
parameters
become altered. Visualizations need to make such significant facts
salient
for human perception. This identifies "success factors" of
visualization
systems for multivariate data, by conducting experiments both with
analysts
working individually on a computer screen, and with groups of analysts
collaborating
in front of a large-sized display.
| Researchers: |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Victor Gonzales (Ph.D. student)
Several undergraduate students
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| Duration: |
Since Jan. 2001 |
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| Funding: |
CRITO |
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| Results: |
J21, C24, C27 , C29, C30, C31, C32, C35, O17
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User Modeling as an Open
Learning Process (LaboUr)
Generic user modeling systems so far pursued a strongly
knowledge-based approach. Heuristics regarding assumptions that can be
made about users when certain observations were made about them had to
be empirically found beforehand and expressed in knowledge
representation mechanisms. The project LaboUr developed
a generic prototype that incorporated user modeling as an open learning
process.
"Open" thereby means that the user modeling system can process any kind
of
assumption about the user, and can communicate with any kind of source
that
provides information about the user. Learning "process" refers to the
continuous
incremental processing, abstraction and revision of assumptions about
the
user based on the observed user behavior.
| Researchers: |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Wolfgang Pohl (Post-Doc.)
Ingo Schwab (Ph.D. student)
Ramin Yasdi (Researcher)
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| Duration: |
Aug. 1997 – Nov. 2000 |
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| Funding: |
German
Research Foundation |
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| Results: |
J18, W12
Schwab I., Pohl W. and Koychev, I. (2000).
Learning to Recommend from Positive Evidence, Proceedings of
Intelligent User Interfaces 2000, ACM Press, 241-247.
Pohl W. (1997). LaboUr - Machine Learning for User Modeling. Proc. of
the Seventh International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
Amsterdam: Elsevier.
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Adaptive and Adaptable
Interactions for Multimedia Telecommunications (AVANTI)
The World Wide Web is going to be the leading online information medium
for some years to come and will most likely become the standard gateway
for
citizens to the “information highway”. Already today, visitors of web
sites
are generally heterogeneous and have different needs, and this is
likely
to increase in the future. The aim of the AVANTI project in which 12
organizations
collaborate is to cater hypermedia information to these individual
needs
by adapting the content and the presentation of web pages to each
individual
user. The special needs of elderly and disabled users are also partly
considered.
A model of the characteristics of user groups, individual users and
usage
environments, and a domain model are exploited in the adaptation
process.
One aim of this research is to verify that adaptation and user modeling
techniques
that were hitherto mostly used for catering interactive software
systems
to able-bodied users also prove useful for adaptation to users with
special
needs. Another original aspect is the development of a network-wide
user
modeling server that can concurrently accommodate the user modeling
needs
of several applications and several instances of an application within
a
distributed computing environment.
| Researchers: |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Josef Fink (Ph.D. student)
Andreas Nill (Ph.D. student)
Igor Jaceniak (Researcher)
Armin Hüttenhain (Researcher)
Gabriele Nordbrock (Researcher)
Several undergraduate students
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| Duration: |
Aug. 1995 – Nov. 1999 |
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| Funding: |
European Commission (ACTS Programme)
Collaborative research of 12 institutions |
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| Results: |
J12,
C14, C15, C16, C17, C18, C19, C20, C22, B12, N10, O11 |
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A User Modeling Shell
System (BGP-MS)
This project developed BGP-MS, a user modeling shell system that can
assist interactive software systems in adapting to their current users
by taking the users’ presumed knowledge, beliefs, and goals into
account. It offers applications several methods for communicating
observations concerning the user to BGPMS, and for obtaining
information on currently held assumptions about the user from BGP-MS.
It provides a choice of two integrated formalisms for representing
beliefs and goals, and includes several types of inferences for drawing
additional assumptions based on an initial interview, observed user
actions, and stereotypical knowledge about pre-defined user subgroups.
BGP-MS is a customizable software system that is independent from
applications, operates concurrently with them, and interacts with them
through inter-process communication. For tailoring BGP-MS to a specific
application domain, the developer must select those components of
BGP-MS that are needed in this domain and fill them with relevant
domain-dependent user modeling knowledge.
| Researchers: |
Alfred Kobsa (Faculty)
Wolfgang Pohl (Ph.D. student)
Jörg Höhle (Ph.D. student)
Several undergraduate students
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| Duration: |
Feb. 1992 – Aug. 1997 |
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| Funding: |
German
Research Foundation |
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| Results: |
J10, C12, C13, C21, C23, C26, W6, W8, W9, W10
Server software: ftp://ftp.gmd.de/gmd/bgp-ms
Draft standard: O10
Wolfgang Pohl (1997): Logic-Based Representation and Reasoning for User
Modeling Shell Systems. Berlin: Academic Publishing Corporation – infix.
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A Natural-Language
Access System to Expert Systems (XTRA)
The XTRA access system to expert systems aims at rendering the
interaction
with expert systems easier for inexperienced users. XTRA communicates
with
the user in a natural language (German), extracts data relevant to the
expert
system from his/her natural-language input, answers user queries as to
terminology,
and provides user-accommodated natural-language verbalizations of
results
and explanations provided by the expert system. A number of novel
artificial
intelligence techniques have been emplozed in the development of the
system,
including the combination of natural-language user input with user
gestures
on the terminal screen, referent identification with the aid of four
different
knowledge sources, simultaneous communication of the access system with
the
user and the expert system, fusion of two complementary knowledge bases
into
a single one, and the design of a natural-language generation component
which
allows for a controlled interaction between the "what-to-say" and the
"how-to-say"
parts to yield a more natural output. XTRA is being deveoped
independenly
of any specific expert system. In its first application, the access to
an
expert system in the income tax domain is being realized.
| Researchers: |
Wolfgang Wahlster (Faculty)
Alfred Kobsa (Co-director)
Roman Jansen-Winkeln (Ph.D. student)
Jürgen Allgaier (Ph.D. student)
Carola Reddig (Ph.D. student)
Dagmar Schmauks (Researcher)
Several undergraduate students
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| Duration: |
May 1985 – Sept. 1991 |
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| Funding: |
German
Research Foundation |
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| Results: |
J5, J6, J7, J8, J9, C7, C8, C9, C10, C11, B8, B9, W1, W2, W3, W4, W5, N6, N7, N8, N9, O6 |
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