A Conceptual Framework for Adaptation and Personalization in Virtual Environments

Abstract

When interacting in a virtual environment, users are confronted with a number of interaction techniques. These interaction techniques may complement each other, but in some circumstances can be used interchangeably. Because of this, it is difficult for the user to determine which interaction technique to use. Furthermore, the use of multimodal feedback, such as haptics and sound, has proven beneficial for some, but not all, users. This complicates the development of such a virtual environment, as the designers are not sure of the implications of the addition of interaction techniques and multimodal feedback. A promising approach for solving these problems lies in the use of adaptation and personalization. By incorporating knowledge of a user’s preferences and habits, the user interface should adapt to the current context of use. This could mean that only a subset of all possible interaction techniques is presented to the user. Alternatively, the interaction techniques themselves could be adapted, e.g. by changing the sensitivity or the nature of the feedback. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework for realizing adaptive personalized interaction in virtual environments. Furthermore, we discuss how a user model can be built, as this model forms the important first step in implementing the conceptual framework.