Bursting the Bubble: Tool for Awareness and Research about Overpersonalization in Information Access Systems

Abstract

Modern information access systems extensively use personalization, automatically filtering and/or ranking content based on the user profile, to guide users to the most relevant material. However, this can also lead to unwanted effects such as the "filter bubble." We present an interactive demonstration system, designed as an educational and research tool, which imitates a search engine, personalizing the search results returned for a query based on the user's characteristics. The system can be tailored to suit any type of audience and context, as well as enabling the collection of responses and interaction data.