Effective interaction principles for online product search environments

To find products in online environments, people increasingly rely on computerized search tools. The performance of such tools depends crucially on an accurate model of their users' preferences. Obtaining such models requires an adequate interaction model and system guidance. Utility theory provides a solid mathematical foundation for optimal decision support. However, it assumes complex preference models that cannot be obtained in e-commerce scenarios: people are not willing to go through complex preference elicitation processes, and furthermore are not capable to articulate their preferences with the required precision. Thus, electronic catalogs have to work with partial and inaccurate models of users' preferences. Unfortunately, this can easily cause users to finish with a suboptimal solution.