INVESTIGATING THE APPROPRIATENESS OF PERSONALISED INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE WITH MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS Fadi Qutaishat, Steve Probets and Mark Hepworth Loughborough University Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU ABSTRACT The process of locating information that is considered interesting or relevant to users is a complex task. This complexity increases when users are characterised by highly changeable preferences, abilities, and needs for information that vary over time. This paper provides an overview of research which has investigated the appropriateness of providing personalised information for a specific community that is characterised by constantly changing preferences and information requirements - the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) community. To do so, a prototype of a personalised information system was designed mainly using XML (eXtensible Markup Language) as its underlying technology. Subsequently, an evaluation of this prototype system was performed. Preliminary results showed that providing personalised content at different levels of complexity and different presentational layouts enhanced the access of people with MS to the information resources contained within the prototype system. This resulted in a better understanding of the users’ requirements and will feed into further system development. KEYWORDS Personalisation, XML, Information Systems Methodologies, Multiple Sclerosis. 1. INTRODUCTION The volume of information available on the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) is growing exponentially (Larson, 1996). It comprises the largest source of information from which users can retrieve or view vast amounts of information in different formats including text, images, video, sound, animations, etc. This growth, however, has led to difficulties in locating the required information in the right format by users who are characterised by different preferences, abilities, expertise needs, etc. One strategy to deal with this is personalisation which “involves a process of gathering user-information during interaction with the user, which is then used to deliver appropriate content and services, tailor-made to the user’s needs” (Bonett, 2001). In this research, rule-based and inference personalisation methods were adopted in the prototype system. Rule-based methods depend on knowing in advance what the conditions are and what to do about them. This is usually achieved using IF/THEN rules. Furthermore, this method requires designers to know what to personalise in advance and thus the rules require continual evaluation and updating. Inference methods depend on monitoring a user’s actions and providing personalised information accordingly. This method delivers a high degree of personalisation but it has some disadvantages in that it consumes system resources due to the extensive monitoring required. Also, as in rule-based personalisation, the inference method needs to know in advance what the conditions are and what to do about them (Payne, 2000). MS is a condition that affects the central nervous system. In MS, damage occurs to the myelin sheath which protects the nerves in the spinal cord. This damage affects the transmission of messages to and from the brain which results in a wide range of symptoms. These symptoms often change over the time (i.e. occur, increase, disappear or reoccur) and include: visual problems (e.g. loss of vision and reduction in colour vision), fatigue (overwhelming sense of exhaustion), pain, depression and many more symptoms. It is IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2006 53