Personalization in the EPOS project

Personalization in the EPOS project
Leo Sauermann, Andreas Dengel, Ludger van Elst, Andreas Lauer, Heiko Maus, Sven Schwarz
Proceedings of the Semantic Web Personalization Workshop at the ESWC 2006 Conference

Abstract:

In this work we present the results of the EPOS project with regard to the needs of personalization in the Semantic Web. Focus of this work is the subjective view of an individual person, expressed in a Personal Information Model (PIMO). It is matched both with personal resources (files, e-mails, and websites) of the user and organizational knowledge (ontologies). A user observation component gathers actions of the user to calculate the current context with regards to current goals and matching elements in the user's PIMO. Combined, the representation of the user's stored information and the current context provide a thorough representation of the user. Desktop applications can use this representation to provide personalized services. Three special purpose applications were implemented: a search engine, a context-sensitive assistant, and a tool for filing new information. An evaluation of this approach showed that it increases productivity and indeed reflects the subjective view of users. Also, the approach satisfies most of the requirements of an Adaptive Educational Hypermedia System AEHS. Parts of this work are published as open source projects.