Panel: User Modeling and User Interfaces

I will consider the problem of helping user’s retrieve information from large diverse collections of textual materials such as bibliographic databases, electronic bulletin boards and online manuals, although I believe that many of my arguments apply to other interactive environments as well. Information retrieval systems like this must handle a heterogeneous population of users, and even a single user will have a range of information needs including very specific requests as well as more general and often ill-defined topical searches. The idea of employing user models to enhance human-computer interaction in IR applications is very appealing. The hope is that some form of encapsulated knowledge about the user will mediate between user input and system responses resulting in more effective, efficient an