============================ CALL FOR PAPERS ============================

Workshop on

Decision Making and Recommendation Acceptance Issues in Recommender Systems (DEMRA) at UMAP 2011

http://www.di.uniba.it/~swap/DM/index.html

Girona, Spain
July 11 or 15, 2011

=========================================================================

Recommender Systems (RSs) have proved to be a valuable kind of adaptive and intelligent systems for
coping with the information overload problem.

While a lot of discussion has been made on recommendation techniques and algorithms, few studies have stood from users' angles
to consider their acceptance of recommendations. Characterizing and evaluating the quality of user experience and users'
subjective attitudes toward the acceptance of recommender technology is an important issue which merits attention from researchers
and practitioners in both web technology and human factor fields.

Therefore, the main goal of the workshop is to stimulate the discussion around problems, challenges and research directions about
the acceptance of recommender technology.

Some questions motivate this workshop:

- What does influence and determine the acceptance of the suggestions computed by a RS?
- How does the presentation of the computed recommendations can increase the acceptance of the suggestions and of the whole system?
- How explanation techniques can contribute to establish trust?
- Are there general rules or guidelines for system design that can be proved to be effective in influencing the user acceptance?
- How the recommendations should be adapted to the context of the human computer interaction to increase their acceptance?
- What Persuasion strategies could be more effective in increasing the recommendation take up?
- What kinds of decision processes occur in users of recommender systems, and how RSs can support these processes?

In particular, the workshop will focus on the following aspects:

- Presentation: How the system presents and visualizes the computed recommendations is obviously a critical factor for the acceptance
and helpfulness of the recommendations and the RS.
- Explanation: Presentation and explanation techniques are not easily separable. A good presentation technique is also capable of explaining recommendations but also in motivating the user to make further requests, including requests for explanations.
- Trust: Previous research indicates that transparency and the possibility of interaction with RSs increase user trust, defined as perceived confidence in a RS competence. Users may be more forgiving, and more confident in recommendations, if they understand why a bad recommendation has been made. In addition, the interface design of a RS may affect its credibility, in particular the importance of explanation interfaces in increasing user acceptance has been well recognized in a number of fields.
- Persuasion: Systems based on persuasion techniques can actively modify the user preferences and perceptions on the proposed items. Recommender systems may combine presentation and persuasion techniques to raise the expected utility of the suggested items.
- Decision support: A complementary perspective on recommender systems sees them as decision support systems that help users to make better choices. From this perspective, the focus is more on the various types of information that users require to make satisfactory decisions, including, for example, information that will enable them to justify their decisions to other people.


Relevant topics for submissions include, but are not limited to:

- User decision processes and RSs
- Modelling user information search and decision making in RSs
- Decision making theory and RSs
- User perceptions leading to the acceptance of recommendations
- Trust in the recommender system
- Persuasion techniques and recommender systems
- Explanations in Recommender Systems
- User-centric evaluation techniques
- Context-aware computing for recommendation enhancement
- Consumer behaviour analysis and recommendation strategies
- Adaptive recommendation processes


WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS

- Francesco Ricci - Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
- Giovanni Semeraro - University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy
- Marco de Gemmis - University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy
- Pasquale Lops - University of Bari "Aldo Moro", Italy



PROGRAM COMMITTEE (tentative):

- Pearl Pu, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
- Judith Masthoff, University of Aberdeen, UK
- Cosimo Palmisano, Ecce Customer, Turin, Italy
- Michele Gorgoglione, Technical University of Bari, Italy
- Paolo Massa, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy
- Shlomo Berkovsky, CSIRO, Australia
- Jill Freyne, CSIRO, Australia
- Linas Baltrunas, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
- Ivan Cantador, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
- Antony Jameson, DFKI - German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Germany
- Alejandro Jaimes, Yahoo! Research, Barcelona, Spain
- Alexander Felfernig, Technische Universität Graz, Austria
- Erich Teppan, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
- Dietmar Jannach, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany
- Markus Zanker, University Klagenfurt, Austria



SUBMISSION DETAILS

We encourage submissions of technical papers in any of the topics of interest of the workshop.
We accept papers up to 8 pages in PDF format. Paper submissions and reviews will be handled electronically
through the EasyChair conference management site.
Papers will be reviewed by the workshop program committee, and will be evaluated according to their significance,
originality, technical content, style, clarity, and relevance to the workshop.

Papers should be formatted according to the general UMAP2011 submission guidelines.
Accepted papers will be included in the workshop proceedings and will be published on the workshop webpage and on
CEUR Workshop proceedings (to confirm).

At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to attend the workshop and present the paper.


IMPORTANT DATES

Paper submissions: April 15, 2011
Notification to authors: May 13, 2011
Camera-ready Copies and Registration of Participation: May 23, 2011
Workshop date: July 11 or 15, 2011