Responsive Information Architect: Context-Sensitive Information Seeking

Speaker:	Dr. Michelle Zhou
		Research Manager
		IBM T. J. Watson Research Center

Title:		"Responsive Information Architect: Context-Sensitive
		 Information Seeking"

Date:		Thursday, 3 February 2005

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Room 3464 (Conference Room, via lift nos. 25/26)
		HKUST

Abstract:

Imagine the next generation of multimedia information portals, where users
are able to obtain information through an intelligent multimodal
interaction that is tailored to the tasks you are performing, customized
to your personal preferences, and adapted to your context and interaction
devices.  To realize this vision, we are building an infrastructure,
called Responsive Information Architect (RIA), which engages users in a
dynamically generated multimodal, multimedia conversation to aid users in
exploring large and complex information spaces.

Unlike existing information access paradigm that forces users to explore
information following pre-defined paths (e.g., GUI menus), RIA allows
users to express their information requests flexibly using multiple
modalities, such as GUI, natural language, and gesture.  Using a rich
context, such as conversation history and data semantics, RIA is capable
of understanding user inputs, including complex data queries (e.g., "tell
me about cities in the north along hudson river with at least 5000
people"), abbreviated requests (e.g., "what about golf courses"), and
imprecise and ambiguous ones.  To create tailored responses to such
diverse user queries introduced during a conversation, we automate the
generation of RIA responses. In particular, we use optimization-based
approaches to select/organize desired content, and assign the proper media
to convey different types of content. To present the intended content in a
specific medium, we develop case-based learning algorithms to dynamically
synthesis speech and visual presentations.  As a result, RIA provides
users with a customized multimedia presentation of retrieved information,
including both speech and graphics.


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Biography:

Michelle Zhou is a research manager at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center,
where she manages the department of intelligent multimedia interaction.
Her research interests include 3D multimedia user interfaces, intelligent
multimodal conversation systems, context-based multimedia presentation
authoring, and information visualization. Zhou received a Ph.D. in
Computer Science from Columbia University in 1999. Her work on automated
generation of interactive visual/multimedia explanations has been
published in a wide variety of conferences and journals, including CHI,
IJCAI/AAAI,ACM Multimedia, and IEEE Visualization/InfoVis. Her more recent
work on automated generation of information graphics by examples has been
featured both in IEEE Computer Magazine, and in the visualization frontier
special issue at New York Academy of Sciences. Zhou is also active in
research communities both inside and outside of IBM. She has chaired the
multimedia professional impact community (MMPIC) at IBM for the past 2
years. She co-organized the international conference on Smart Graphics,
and served as program committee members for top-rated conferences,
including IEEE Visualization/InfoVis and ACM Multimedia.