The Intelligent E-Sales Clerk: the Basic Ideas

E-commerce is one of the most active and important Internet application areas, yet selecting a product to buy is normally quite a frustrating experience. In this paper, we identify the principal user tasks: the thinning-game and the end game. The thinning-game is used to find a suitably small set of candidate items on the basis of personal specifications. The end game is used to compare the features of a set of candidate items in order to find a single “right” item to purchase. We derive requirements for efficiently performing these two tasks and review traditional techniques according to these requirements. Finally, we propose efficient solutions for both tasks. The thinning game is solved by dynamic taxonomies, a recently introduced knowledge management model. The end game, which is inherently an information presentation problem, by a color-coding scheme.