Method and apparatus for user-steerable recommendations

摘要

Method and apparatus for transparent, steerable recommendations. A steerable recommender uses tag clouds including descriptive tags and associated weights to generate recommendations. Users may dynamically interact with the recommender via a user interface to steer the recommendations. A tag cloud for an item is displayed, items for which associated tag clouds are most similar to the displayed tag cloud are identified, and the items are displayed as recommendations. The strength of similarity of the items to the displayed tag cloud may be displayed. The user may modify a tag cloud, for example by changing the weight of a tag or by adding or removing a tag, and the recommendations may be automatically updated to reflect the modification. A recommended item may be selected to display the tag cloud corresponding to the item. A user may select a user interface element to request information on why a particular item was recommended.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
displaying a tag cloud in response to user input specifying the tag cloud,
wherein the tag cloud comprises one or more tags,wherein each tag specifies a descriptive word or phrase; determining a set of recommended items from a collection of items in response to the user input,
wherein the set of recommended items is determined according to similarity of tag clouds associated with the items in the collection to the displayed tag cloud,wherein the set of recommended items comprises items for which a determined similarity value is above a similarity threshold; and displaying the set of recommended items.