Design issues in adaptive web-site development

Abstract

For almost a decade people have been developing hypertext or hypermedia applications\nthat adapt to some "features" of their users, like knowledge or preferences [Brusilovsky, 1996].\nRecently some adaptive application environments have become available that use World Wide Web\ntechnology. Examples of such systems are Interbook [Brusilovsky et aI., 1998] and AHA [De Bra &\nCalvi, 1998]. The adaptation can range from a simple (automatic) selection between different versions\nof some information pages to the completely dynamic generation of all pages from atomic information\nunits and the automatic generation of all hypertext links. This paper sketches a general architecture for\nadaptive Web-sites by building on existing models such as Dexter [Halasz & Schwartz, 1994] and\nIMMPS [Bordegoni et aI., 1997].\nMore importantly, this paper identifies issues in adaptive Web-site design for which no general\napproach or solution appears to exist (yet). These include (but are not limited to): the separation of a\nconceptual representation of an application domain from the content of the actual Web-site, the\nseparation of content from adaptation issues, the structure and granularity of user models, the role of\na user and application context, and the communication between different adaptive Web-site "engines".