Evaluating the Usability of Adaptive Recommendations

In the design, development and evaluation of adaptive systems, usability aspects are largely ignored so far. A correct but badly designed adaptation decision might spoil the purpose. This paper provides an example of a usability evaluation with an adaptive collaborative system. The results suggest that the representation format of recommendations did not strongly affect standard usability measures. However, comparing different design versions helped users to identify strengths and weaknesses. 1 Usability in Adaptive Systems The lack of evaluation studies of adaptive systems as been noted frequently for a number of years [Chin, 2001] [Paramythis u0026 Weibelzahl, 2005]. While the volume and quality of studies in the field seems to gradually improve, the effects of usability on adaptation seem to be widely ignored so far. In fact, most systems reported in the literature remain at the prototype level with often poor usability. From a philosophy of science perspective, this is perfectly acceptable in many cases, as these prototypes are just vehicles to provide proof of concept or to demonstrate the quality of certain modelling or inference approaches as opposed to commercial applications. However, in the long run, the scientific community will have to demonstrate effects and impact of adaptive systems in real or realistic settings in regard to different application areas. 2 Adaptive System Development and