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The more they try, the more they are likely to come back!!

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Are you trying to launch an online site for customers? Did you know that on an average, 60% of users do not return to a site after their first visit?

In this research, we discover factors that predict whether first-time users return to MovieLens, our movie recommendation site.  A model based on these factors successfully predicts 70% of returning users (and non-returning ones).  Notably, the best single predictor of user return is the diversity of features explored in the user’s first session!  Along the way, we develop a process and a metric for activity diversity — one that can be applied to any site or context. Interested in further details? Read on!

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How do People Ask for Recommendations?

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While your TV’s remote might already have a microphone in it for voice commands, it is no replacement for a video store clerk. The current generation of devices respond to a limited set of commands, offer mostly shallow integration with deeper personalization, and may not understand complicated recommendation-seeking questions. Our research aims to develop techniques that can bring together voice recognition technologies, personalization, and advanced search features to provide more natural ways for people to discover new digital content. (more…)

87% of People Got This Question about Their Door Lock Wrong!

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“You drive home and park. Your car is full of groceries and other shopping, which take many trips to bring into the house. Five minutes after you drove in, you are still making trips to the car. Is the door locked or unlocked?” What if I told you that 87% of people got this question wrong? Sensors and “smart” devices for your home may hold the promise of making life more convenient, but they may also make it harder to understand and predict things like the state of you “smart” door lock in common situations like the one above. Want to give it a try?

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Friends with Benefits: How GroupLens and Wikimedia are Happier Together

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From left to right: Kyle Condiff, Sarah McRoberts, Aaron Halfaker, and Jacob Thebault-Spieker having lunch at GroupLens.

 

Aaron Halfaker peels back the gleaming foil of an overloaded burrito. Surrounded by doctoral candidates at the GroupLens lunch table, he chomps into his eagerly anticipated rice and beans, taking breaks to shoot the breeze or riff on research ideas. After earning his Ph.D. in 2013, Halfaker scored a full-time research job at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF). Yet every Thursday, he returns to hang out with us on the University of Minnesota campus. This is certainly an unusual arrangement…what keeps him coming back? (more…)

Video-Mediated Peer Support in an Online Recovery Community

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Can you think of a movie or a TV series that has enacted how a drinking problem (or other substance use disorder) ruins someone’s career and/or relationship(s), or even causes death? You may be thinking “This is easy!” because there are so many! Unfortunately, the consequences such movies and shows depict are not purely fictional, and often reality is much worse. Substance use disorders are an illness and a severe problem all over the world. For example, a 17-year-old girl in my home country of Bangladesh killed her parents after they restricted her because they found out about her drug addiction. Horrifying, isn’t it? More than 23 million people in the United States abused alcohol and other drugs in 2014. There have been many different treatments and maintenance programs for recovery from substance abuse, among which 12-step fellowships like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) are the most popular. These are “12-step fellowships” that involve people regularly attending meetings where they sit in a circle and share about their recovery.

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