Toward Experiential Utility Elicitation for Interface Customization

TL;DR

This paper introduces experiential utility elicitation methods for interface customization, demonstrating that experiencing utilities leads to better understanding of stochastic outcomes and sequential utility in intelligent assistance.

Contribution

It proposes and compares experiential utility elicitation techniques with predictive methods for more accurate user preference modeling in interface customization.

Findings

Experiential methods improve understanding of stochastic outcomes.

Experiential elicitation better captures sequential utility.

Experiential approach enhances preference accuracy in interface design.

Abstract

User preferences for automated assistance often vary widely, depending on the situation, and quality or presentation of help. Developing effectivemodels to learn individual preferences online requires domain models that associate observations of user behavior with their utility functions, which in turn can be constructed using utility elicitation techniques. However, most elicitation methods ask for users' predicted utilities based on hypothetical scenarios rather than more realistic experienced utilities. This is especially true in interface customization, where users are asked to assess novel interface designs. We propose experiential utility elicitation methods for customization and compare these to predictivemethods. As experienced utilities have been argued to better reflect true preferences in behavioral decision making, the purpose here is to investigate accurate and efficient procedures that are suitable for software domains. Unlike conventional elicitation, our results indicate that an experiential approach helps people understand stochastic outcomes, as well as better appreciate the sequential utility of intelligent assistance.