Integration of Dialog-based Product Advisors into Filter Systems: Integration dialogbasierter Produktberater in Filtersysteme

Different techniques such as search functions or recommendation components are used today to support the often complex product search on the Internet. Faceted filter systems that successively limit the result set according to the set filter settings have proven to be quite successful. However, this method requires clear objectives and domain knowledge on the part of the users. As an alternative, conversational product advisors who select suitable products on the basis of a sequence of questions have gained more importance in recent times, whereby the questions are based more on the tasks and application scenarios of the users than on the technical properties of the products. However, there is currently a lack of approaches that integrate filter systems and conversational advisors in a meaningful and closely coupled way. In this paper an integrated approach is presented, where users can switch between filter systems and advisory dialogues, whereby selection actions in one component have a consistent and transparent effect on the other component and can be further adjusted there. The aim is to better support users with different levels of knowledge of the product type concerned. We describe the requirements for such integrated systems resulting from our approach and report on a user study in which the user behavior and the subjective evaluation were examined in a prototypical implementation.