User-controlled link adaptation

Abstract

This paper introduces an adaptable hypermedia approach applied to adaptive link annotation techniques. This approach suggests that the combination of direct manipulation with automated link annotation affords greater user control over page adaptation. In turn, this direct control better supports user focus in information discovery tasks. Unlike adaptive-only systems, our approach lets users both define multiple topics of interest and then manipulate how these topics' associated links are presented in a page. We discuss how the approach can be applied both to pages viewed as well as to the user's history list, thereby relieving users from the task of either adding to or organizing bookmarks. We describe the prototype developed to support these manipulations, as well as the adaptive architecture developed to support these controls.