How to Apply the User Profile Usability Technique in the User Modelling Activity for an Adaptive Food Recommendation System for People on Special Diets

Abstract

Interest among software professionals in the possibility of adapting software to user requirements has grown as a result of the evolution of software analysis, design and implementation thinking and the growth in the number of software systems users. Moving away from the traditional approach where the user has to settle for the options offered by software systems, different factors (e.g. user needs, aspirations, preferences, knowledge level, goals) have to be taken into account for this purpose. Technically, this possibility is referred to as adaptiveness, and it requires user data. It is these data (user model) that determine the adaptiveness conditions. Our aim is to build a user model for adaptive systems applied to nutritional requirements, modelling user characteristics that affect their diets and help to improve their health. To build the user model, we apply the user profile usability technique. In order to validate our proposal, we analyse and design a preliminary prototype of an adaptive system capable of making food recommendations to satisfy specific user needs. This study revealed that diet is a propitious field for the development of adaptive systems and that user modelling is a good choice for design of this type of systems.

Keywords

• Usability techniques and User profiling
• Diets
• User modelling