Experiments in dynamic critiquing

Conversational recommender systems are commonly used to help users to navigate through complex product-spaces by alternatively making product suggestions and soliciting user feedback in order to guide subsequent suggestions. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in developing effective interfaces that support user interaction in domains of limited user expertise. Critiquing has proven to be a popular and successful user feedback mechanism in this regard, but is typically limited to the modification of single features. We review a novel approach to critiquing, dynamic critiquing, that allows users to modify multiple features simultaneously by choosing from a range of so-called compound critiques that are automatically proposed based on their current position within the product-space. In addition, we introduce the results of an important new live-user study that evaluates the practical benefits of dynamic critiquing.