User Goals and Interests

Users use an (adaptive) hypermedia system for a reason. This reason, or user goal may be explicit (like a search string in an information retrieval system) or implicit (the user want to learn about the subject of a hyperdocument). User goals and interests can be also be entered explicitly by the user (like through a search interface, or the "teach me" interface in Interbook [BSW96b]) or deduced from the user's behavior. From every node in a hyperdocument there are typically several links to other nodes. By observing which links a user selects a "pattern" can be deduced that may indicate what a user's goal may be.