Knowledge bases for user guidance in information seeking dialogues
Anne Tißen · 1993
Information seeking activities are inherently interactive processes.Modeling the interaction gives the chance to build flexible interfaces, which are adaptable to the user's tasks and goals, but at the risk of loosing orientation in the information space.We propose to guide the information seeking process by a structured dialogue control.Applying a case-based approach, we employ cases of previous successful dialogues, which are adaptable to the new problem situation, for guiding and controlling art information seeking dialogue.It has become evident that flexible dialogue behavior of interface systems can be achieved only if background knowledge is modelled in the system explicitly.We present several knowledge bases about dialogue structure, the user's tasks and goals, and the system's knowledge about the domain and how they fit together during the ongoing process.Our approach is implemented in a prototype of a case-based dialogue manager (CADI), applied in the MERIT interface system to the CORDIS databases.KEYWORDS: modeling techniques for interface design, user guidance, case-based dialogue manager, information retrieval 1.The Cordls databases are offered by ECHO, the otllcial host organization of the Commission of the European Community (CEC).For MERIT, we use subsets of theonginat databases covering about 180 programs with ca.900projects funded by differentresearch programs.About 60000 rganizations are rnvolved in project consortia.