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By Carmel Smith - July 2000
The objective of the meeting was to bring together the IST consituencies to exchange experience and ideas and draw-out guidance for the DG on the theme ‘Personalising content’. The conclusions of the meeting are presented in this article and will be published on the EC website. The outcomes of the meeting provide an input to planning future activities of the DG and ultimately strengthen the IST programme integration in 2001.
Five brief presentations were delivered describing different perspectives on personalisation: the technology, the market, the mobile and social, the legal and the user perspectives. The purpose of these presentations was to present ideas and themes to stimulate discussion. Three discussion groups, assuming different perspectives on personalisation, addressed six questions designed to draw-out issues and guidance on personalisation for the sector.
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Personalisation is at the heart of a user-friendly IST. The trend towards increased bandwidth, media convergence, multiple access, mobility and personal mobile devices presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the application of personalisation in the Interactive Electronic Publishing (IEP) sector. Changing business models in IEP are far more complex than current personalisation solutions can readily cater for.
New projects addressing personalisation should pay attention to personalisation of service rather than just personalisation of content. Personalisation should be seen as a process, combining a dialogue between all parties (b2b, b2c, c2c) with exchange of data to provide services with added value. At present the dialogue is very limited, characterised by service push. There are movements towards permission-based, consumer-orientated personalisation. Making personalisation transparent to the user would be a key factor to improve dialogue. Providing the user with tools to manage their own personalisation may be another. More objectivity is required to choose solutions, which cater for the many different stakeholder interests in personalised IEP services.
To effectively employ personalisation in new complex IEP scenarios, requires more understanding of the business and technology issues. Already multimedia content is delivered via multiple channels and media to heterogeneous users who use different personal devices in diverse social and environmental settings. Clearly current technological mechanisms are not tuned to business approaches and rules. Better customisation solutions require more attention to emerging or new business models and practices in IEP.
Personalisation software is still in its infancy, which means there are no turn-key solutions. Further, Europe significantly lags behind USA in getting new tools to the market. Solutions using agent technologies still have a lot of hurdles to overcome. Current solutions are too complex and not cost-effective for SMEs. To improve this scenario, additional technology approaches need to be evaluated and areas of improvement identified.
User profiles, the system model of the user, are based upon technological or at best marketing/advertising models. These user models are insufficient. Those at the sharp end of personalisation, the technology developers, are calling for a better understanding of the usability and user acceptance requirements for personalisation. Technology developers need more guidance on what kinds of information users are prepared to give the service provider, how they can acquire the data and what personalised content and service delivery response is desired by different users.
More sophisticated models of the social and psychological aspects of on-line consumer behaviour are needed. Research should be directed towards improving understanding of e.g. personas, facets of human memory, consumer motivation, on-line purchasing, content consumption, media usage habits, tolerance of automated personalisation versus user-controlled personalisation, etc.
Many current day examples of personalisation are cosmetic, unhelpful and in some cases time consuming and annoying to the user. Automating the user interface is a complex undertaking. User consultation and usability trials throughout development are essential to provide ‘user-friendly’ services. Personalisation is not a substitute for good user interface design (Jakob Neilsen). Personalisation implies higher standards of user interface design and usability than ever before.
The five presentations on personalisation are outlined in section 3. The group discussion and recommendations for the sector, i.e. activities required, research themes to address and ways of expanding the constituency and improving proposal submissions, etc) are presented in section 4.
Wolfgang HUBER (Head of Unit) and Pascal Jacques (Head of Sector) provided the brief and context of the meeting. The objective of the meeting was to bring together the IST constituencies and to seek their guidance, experience and ideas on the theme ‘Personalising creative content’. The outcomes of the meeting provide an input to planning future activities of the DG and ultimately strengthen the IST programme integration in 2001.
In the IST Workprogramme 2000, Key Action III had two action lines directly addressing personalisation. These were open for proposals in the 2nd Call.
III.1.2. ‘Personalising Content’ - To develop, validate and demonstrate personalised publishing and personalised delivery and authoring solutions for distributed multimedia content
III.1.3. ‘Trials and test-beds for digital content authoring and personalising systems’ - To promote the use of new multimedia authoring and design systems as well as personalised applications of high-quality multimedia content and services in key areas (knowledge, business and lifestyle publishing, advertising and geographic information).
Nine projects were selected:
The objectives in IST 20001 are highly focussed on personalisation:
This consultation meeting considered the current state of the art of personalisation in IEP and issues, actions and priorities for 20001.
In the morning, five brief presentations were delivered describing different perspectives on personalisation: the technology, the market, the mobile and social, the legal and the user perspectives. The purpose of these presentations was to present ideas and themes to stimulate discussion. In the afternoon, three discussion groups, assuming different perspectives on personalisation, addressed six questions designed to draw-out issues and guidance on personalisation for the sector.
The presentations and discussion results are described the next two sections of the report.
There were five presentations in the morning of the consultation meeting each covering a particular perspective on personalisation: the technology, the market, the mobile and social, the legal and the user perspective.
Mr Boumans described personalisation as three phases: with an emphasis on direct-marketing in phase 1(the analog world); an emphasis on customisation for marketing purposes in phase 2 e.g. by affinity group, market segment, customer community; and an emphasis on true personalisation in phase 3 e.g. characterised by the service knowing the user personally.
A model of the Digital Content Loop model was introduced to show the cycle of transaction-information-communication in which personalisation fits. Different business applications of personalisation were presented: personalised web pages, personalised newsletters, catalogs and other email based communications, advertising, sales ordering and customer communities. Mr Boumans described how these applications were being used in www.worldscienceservices.com, a website offering B2B publishing services for professionals and scientists.
Mr Thomas Ritz presented some general comments on the technology perspective and the PEACH project. From a purely technology point of view, personalisation involves filtering content based on qualified information of the user’s textual interests and then presenting it in an appropriate media, at the desired time, to the desired environment. Personalisation technology comprises:
There are a number of technologies available but no turn-key solutions.
Personalised delivery presents key challenges:
Filtering
Formatting
Presentation
Agent based information retrieval presents key challenges:
Standards present key challenges
Prof. Peter Thomas was unable to attend the meeting but generously provided an outline of his presentation ideas. Prof Tom Bosser kindly stepped in to deliver the presentation ideas supplemented with his own comments.
By 2010, the internet will be ubiquitous. It will have reached into the lives of everyone who chooses to be connected to it, and many who will have no choice in the matter. The PC will be a specialist tool deployed for certain types of work. Most people will access the Internet through digital television, mobile phone, games console, DVD player, or through an internet appliance attached to a cable or ADSL network.
The world of the consumer can be seen in terms of 'i-zones', between which consumers move. These zones are:
(1) the television, or entertainment zone
(2) the office zone
(3) the mobile zone, and
(4) the communications zone.
The mobile zone divides into two parts, (a) the private space of the car and (b) the public spaces of the street, the train, or ‘third-places’ such as bars and cafés. At the same time, the distinctions between the segments of consumers’ lives will blur further. The separation of work, home, and social space will become less marked.
Wrapped around the digital market, technology, and wider societal perspectives on personalisation is that of the user perspective. The key user issues are:
Currently, the means of collecting such information in the digital world is through the requirement to complete an on-line registration form of which some parts are mandatory if one wishes to access a service. The 'personalisation' that results is weak - often only in the form of providing information that could have been gleaned through a competent web-search by a consumer.
This situation will change radically, as consumers realise that personal information is a commercial commodity. Information intermediary businesses (iis) are already arising which trade in personal information, offering the possibility of narrowcasting to specific micro-audiences. iis will in the future pay users for increasingly detailed access to their information and create a strong linkage between user demand and commercial products.
We can expect to see a range of i-products and i-services that are increasingly targeted at audiences of one, with clearly defined product and service differentiation according to the various i-zones.
To ensure the development of effective solutions that deliver permission-based consumer-oriented personalisation, the following RTD objectives are required:
Understanding the digital consumer: models of the digital consumer do not exist. What we have are models of consumer behaviour derived from existing consumer and retail marketing frameworks. A model of the digital consumer would include the ways in which i-zones and I-services interact to provide opportunities for consumers, and an understanding of the cultural demographics of the on-line world.
Understanding the nature of information relationships: the Internet economy is changing the nature of b2b and b2c relationships and generating a new c2c digital marketplace. Research is required to create a dynamic map of the shifting value chains between SME i-businesses, established clicks-and-mortar internet retailers/service providers, and consumers
Understanding UI requirements for personalisation: previous attempts to create 'personalised' systems (e.g. using intelligent/expert systems) have been largely unsuccessful. It is clear that if personalisation of digital content is to be effective new ui frameworks, methodologies and tools are required to create compelling user experiences.
Prof. Ole Laurisden provided a presentation on the mobile and social aspects of personalisation. The presentation began with a review of the changes from analog to digital in European broadcasting and telecommunications technologies, which concluded with a future model of ‘integrated communication’ in IP fields. Early basic standards, such as H323 underlie the integration of services via TCP/P over the Internet. Use of high speed ATM-LANs is pushing public Telecom networks to improve the wide area network. Services are potentially very cheap through telecommunications. The web can now carry 3.5 times the number of terabytes of media it could carry in 19998. The focus of the future is the merge of media with telecommunications. MPEG-coding is very important for digital convergence of Telecommunications, Broadcasting and Information Technology. The Internet is the point of technology convergence and is characterised by the coming together of a wide range of formerly distinct industries, in IT (Telecoms, Computer, Software, On-Line Information) and traditional media (cable, consumer electronics, entertainment media and custom publishing). The Lucent Network vision illustrates how all services can be organised around distributed servers compared to the centralised systems characterising the analog world.
Prof Laurisden predicts that in the future of unified TCP/IP network, users will access information services through their own personalised ‘content portal’, typically through a browser. A demonstration of a prototype personal hand held device showed how a person can use one device to help with all her information needs when visiting a new town, taking a trip to a gallery and using public transport. The mobile device provides everything the user needs, just when they need it, e.g. maps, prices, timetables, automatic ticket payments, taxi bookings, etc.
The presentation continued with a review of mobility and home access in 1999, mainly the launch of the WAP Homepage and the TV as an access point. Prof Laurisden described a model of Interactive Service Evolution moving through:
Most telecommunications providers have not yet decided how they will respond to digital convergence. Many have to make radical shifts in the their business attack strategies if they are to reap the benefits of the changing technologies and markets.
Questions relating to equality of access and privacy issues were raised at the end of this presentation on personalised services in the future mobile society. These were taken up further in the afternoon discussion.
Mr Jacques Folon (Bird and Bird, UK) gave a brief presentation on the legal aspects of personalisation concerning data privacy and consumer protection.
The EU Directive on data privacy appears to be having little effect. Only 1% of the companies in France adhere to the principles of the directive. The directive includes principles, which govern:
Personal data is any information on a person, which could be used to identify them directly or indirectly. Invisible data collection from browsers and cookies often use the IP address as key data. This is personal data according to the directive. But it is very insecure. ISP’s can easily reconcile IP address to a certain individual’s data. Strictly, according to the EU directive, all websites making use of customer profiling should declare their use of this data explicitly to the consumer and adhere to standards of data privacy and consumer protection.
Cross border data transfers are subject to laws which are not equivalent. In Germany the law goes further than the EU Directive and it can be complicated to do e-commerce and e-business. Mr Folon warns that if some countries go further than the directive and others take no notice of it, then Europe will not have the harmonisation it strives for.
Trust is the keyword. Personalisation data and personalised services have to be negotiated with the consumer. A trusting relationship has to be established, with an agreed exchange between parties.
In the afternoon three discussion groups addressed six consultation questions on personalising content.
Group 1: Market/Business perspectives
Group 2: Technology perspective
Group 3: Social, mobility, user, and legal perspectives
(Q1) A broader definition of personalisation
(Q2) The context of and trends in application in IEP sector
(Q3) Type of activities for sector to address
(Q4) Specific research themes to address
(Q5) The actors/stakeholders and ways to bring in new constituencies
(Q6) Ways to ensure proposals address needs of sector
Flip charts, pens and aide-memoires were available to each group. Discussion groups each assigned a rapporteur to present the discussion outcomes for each question. The chairperson summarised the general themes and overall conclusions at the end of the meeting.
Businesses in the IEP sector need to retain the customer in a competitive marketplace. Personalisation can increase business, interest and ‘stickiness’ and is used to engender customer loyalty and establish customer communities.
Personalisation should be seen as a process of building a profile, and making an appropriate personalised service response (e.g. content specific to user interests). Personalisation technologies should:
Personalisation techniques are currently applied in a service ‘push’ mode. These approaches imply a threat to consumer rights and privacy, suggest the use of ‘dirty’ sales tactics and are characterised by a distinct lack of transparency in the personalisation process.
Personalisation could help the consumer to find what he needs and to cope with the overload of information/content available. However current web sites provide very poor personalisation. A well-targeted search would, in many cases, provide better results. Furthermore traditional caching mechanisms don’t work with personalised pages making it impossible for the user to return to previously personalised content.
· Better mechanisms are needed to understand what the user wants. Using a profile to match content on only a few words is still a very basic approach and unlikely to deliver the type of personalisation scenarios anticipated in the future IST. Approaches to improved filtering should address the problem at the user end.
Users experience difficulty in expressing new and changing information requirements and finding their way back to content which was interesting and useful in the past.
· More tools should be provided for the user to formulate and manage their information needs
IEP models are moving away from one to one towards many to many service provision. Different types of service are technically feasible. Industry needs:
From all perspectives the sector should ensure that projects:
The discussion groups considered the open problems in personalisation which require longer term research. They identified requirements:
The personalisation process and the roles of the different actors within the publishing chain are unclear. In emerging models of IEP sector there are multiple actors: different multimedia content providers, content users, technology providers, market owners, aggregators, advertisers, marketers, etc. Some actors have multiple roles e.g. they can be both creators and consumers.
There are different actors in b2b, b2c and c2c IEP services. In a b2c and c2c personalisation scenario, consumers are actors at all levels: faced with providing a variety of personalisation data that leads to personalised services. The consumer can be a member of the public, and a semi-professional, creating and accessing content from multiple information points, personal car, TV, mobile phone, etc and also use public access points.
It is strongly recommended that project proposals include:
Personalisation is at the heart of a user-friendly IST. The trend towards increased bandwidth, media convergence, multiple access, mobility and personal mobile devices presents both an opportunity and a challenge for the application of personalisation in the IEP sector. Changing business models in IEP are far more complex than current personalisation solutions can readily cater for.
New projects addressing personalisation should pay attention to personalisation of service rather than just personalisation of content. Personalisation should be seen as a process, combining a dialogue between all parties (b2b, b2c, c2c) with exchange of data to provide services with added value. At present the dialogue is very limited, characterised by service push. There are movements towards permission-based, consumer-orientated personalisation. Making personalisation transparent to the user would be a key factor to improve dialogue. Providing the user with tools to manage their own personalisation may be another. More objectivity is required to choose solutions, which cater for the many different stakeholder interests in personalised IEP services.
To effectively employ personalisation in new complex IEP scenarios, requires more understanding of the business and technology issues. Already multimedia content is delivered via multiple channels and media to heterogeneous users who use different personal devices in diverse social and environmental settings. Clearly current technological mechanisms are not tuned to business approaches and rules. Better customisation solutions require more attention to emerging or new business models and practices in IEP.
Personalisation software is still in its infancy, which means there are no turn-key solutions. Further, Europe significantly lags behind USA in getting new tools to the market. Solutions using agent technologies still have a lot of hurdles to overcome. Current solutions are too complex and not cost-effective for SMEs. To improve this scenario, additional technology approaches need to be evaluated and areas of improvement identified.
User profiles, the system model of the user, are based upon technological or at best marketing/advertising models. These user models are insufficient. Those at the sharp end of personalisation, the technology developers, are calling for a better understanding of the usability and user acceptance requirements for personalisation. Technology developers need more guidance on what kinds of information users are prepared to give the service provider, how they can acquire the data and what personalised content and service delivery response is desired by different users.
More sophisticated models of the social and psychological aspects of on-line consumer behaviour are needed. Research should be directed towards improving understanding of e.g. personas, facets of human memory, consumer motivation, on-line purchasing, content consumption, media usage habits, tolerance of automated personalisation versus user-controlled personalisation, etc.
Many current day examples of personalisation are cosmetic, unhelpful and in some cases time consuming and annoying to the user. Automating the user interface is a complex undertaking. User consultation and usability trials throughout development are essential to provide ‘user-friendly’ services. Personalisation is not a substitute for good user interface design (Jakob Neilsen). Personalisation implies higher standards of user interface design and usability than ever before.
UEA have kindly hosted a discussion forum [1], entitled "The speed of technological development is rapid in the furniture industry. Are the new ideas and achievements utilized efficiently enough?". The participants of the personalisation consultation meeting have already begun to use it to continue the exchange.
Chairperson
Ms. Carmel Smith (Usermatics Ltd, Edinburgh, UK)
European Commission
Mr. Wolfgand Huber (Head of Unit D1)
Mr Pascal Jacques (Head of Sector)
Mr Michel Brochard (Administrator, Unit D1)
Ms Suzanna Giorgiou (Secretary, Unit D1)
Speakers
Mr. Jak Boumans (Electronic Media Publishing,
Netherlands)
Prof. Thomas Ritz (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Prof. Ole Laurisden (Danish Technical University)
Mr. Jacques Folon (Bird & Bird, London)
Prof. Peter Thomas (University West England)
Prof.Tom Bosser (Axit GmbH, Germany)
Participants
Luis Oliveira (INEC/IST Lisbon University, Portugal)
Riccardo Pascotto (T-Nova Deutche Telecom, Germany)
Pieter Kesteloot (WTCM ICT Belgium)
Marc Van Rymenant (NetWay sa, Luxembourg)
Joaquim Jorge (DEI/IST Lisbon)
Gema Lopez (SEMA Group, Spain)
Peter Baumgartner (University Koblenzlandau, Germany)
Concha Fernandez (INFSO D2 Luxembourg)
Michel Vander Straeten (Info2clear NV-SA)
Adrian Brazier (Dept. Trade & Industry UK)
Luk Vervenne (Synergetics)
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Carmel Smith
Usermatics Ltd
Edinburgh
UK
carmel@usermatics.co.uk
<http://www.usermatics.co.uk>
Carmel is a leading expert in usability and evaluation. She has a rare combination of skills in Psychology and Software Engineering, gained through employment in the IT Industry and in Military and University research laboratories. She has worked for over 15 years on all aspects of the design, development and evaluation of the User Interface. For the last 4 years Carmel has been an independent consultant working through her own company, Usermatics ltd, which specialises in user interface design and usability evaluation in E-Commerce, Electronic Publishing, Multimedia and Education and Training. She now provides strategic research for new User Interface concepts and works with multidisciplinary teams, designing, testing and evaluating the usability of new Internet-based services.
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For citation purposes:
Smith, C. "At the Event: Consultation Meeting on 'Personalising Content' - IST WORKPROGRAMME 2001 - Luxembourg 19th May 2000", Cultivate Interactive, issue
1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/content/>
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