Personalized Conversational Recommendation Systems :: Business Communications

Conversation via Dialogue Management Up Personalized Conversational Recommendation Systems Conversational Recommendation The goal of recommendation systems is to help users find items of interest, and on that pointof they must eliminate some choices from consideration while keeping others. To achieve this, they must either know or determine the interests of the current user, then turn in items that satisfy those interests. One of the most widely used approaches for information acquisition in recommendation systems is the use of a simple form (usually a single(a) query box) that the user fills in. Coupled with this, a common presentation format is the ranked dip approach. In this scheme, the system presents a usually long list of results, ordered by their predicted relevance to the user. The combined technique of information acquisition through a form and presentation in a list originated in information retrieval, where it was used to help find documents or reports during libr ary research. The basic method, which we refer to as the ranked list approach, is more general, however, and it underlies the simpler search engines for the World panoptic Web, which are used regularly for many different selection tasks. In contrast, the ADAPTIVE PLACE ADVISOR supports conversations as its mode of interaction. In this approach, one colloquial participant, which we call the inquirer, asks a second participant, which we call the advisor, for assistance in selecting an item. For example, if the inquirer is deciding on a restaurant at which to have dinner, the conversation may proceed as follows 1. Inquirer Where do you think I should eat tonight? 2. Advisor What type of food would you like? 3. Inquirer What types are there? 4. Advisor You can say things like Chinese, Indian, and Mediterranean. 5. Inquirer Oh, maybe a cheap Indian place. 6. Advisor What kind of parking would you like? 7. Inquirer I dont care, as long as its in Palo Alto. 8. Advisor Im sorry, I dont k now of any restaurants like that, would you like to search for any price? 9. Inquirer No, I think Id like Chinese instead. 10. Advisor How does Mandarin Gourmet on 420 Ramona sound?1 11. Inquirer No, what else do you have? 12. Advisor How closely Jing-Jing Szechwan Hunan Gourmet on 443 Emerson Street? 13. Inquirer Sure, that sounds fine. We will refer to systems that mimic this approach to recommendation as conversational recommendation systems. The interaction supported by conversational recommendation systems is quite different from that found in the ranked list approach.