Managing Uncertainties in Interactive Systems

To adapt users’ input and tasks an interactive system must be able to establish a set of assumptions about users’ profiles and task characteristics, which is often referred as user models. However, to develop a user model an interactive system needs to analyze users’ input and recognize the tasks and the ultimate goals users trying to achieve, which may involve a great deal of uncertainties. In this chapter the approaches for handling uncertainty are reviewed and analyzed. The purpose is to provide an analytical overview and perspective concerning the major methods that have been proposed to cope with uncertainties.