23.8.1 Case-based Critique
One means for performing a conversation with a user is the Case-based Critique approach, which finds cases similar to the user’s query or profile and then elicits a critique for refining the user’s interests (see Chapters [37] and 13). As mentioned above
(Section 23.8), the user is not required to clearly define their preferences when the
conversation initiates; this may be particularly beneficial for mobile device-oriented
systems. Each step of iteration displays the system’s recommendations in a ranked
list and allows for user critique, which will force the system to re-evaluate its recommendations and generate a new ranked list. Eliciting a user critique when a feature
of a recommended item is unsatisfactory may be more effective in obtaining the end
goal than mere similarity-based query revision combined with recommendation by
proposing. As an example of a user critique, he/she may comment “I want a less
expensive hotel room” or “I like restaurants serving wine.”