An Index Navigator : Understanding and Expressing User's Changing Interest

Abstract

It is important to guide a user to interesting documents in a large-scale document-database. However, when the user is not an expert of the area of his/her new interest, it is difficult for the user to name precise keywords in which he/she is interested, nor to select areas of his/her own interest. This paper presents an Index Navigator which clarifies what areas the user is interested in, what keywords he/she should investigate, and what documents concern his/her interest. A tough problem for such a system is to understand interesting areas for the user, among other areas-sets which can explain his/her behaviors. Our Index Navigator employs an inference method called Cost-based Cooperation of Multiple Abducers (CCMA), for understanding user's interest from the history of the user's expression of interest in insufficient keywords, even if the changing speed of the user's interest is totally unknown. With this device, the Index Navigator guides the user to really important areas, keywords and documents.