Personalization by Program Slicing

Personalization involves customizing information access to the end-user. As any new area of computer science research it lacks formal models to guide the design of systems. In this paper, we present a modeling methodology, based on generative programming, for personalizing interactions with hierarchical websites. The methodology entails modeling a user's interaction with a site in a program and applying program slicing to personalize the interaction. While preserving interactivity, this approach does not require the designer to anticipate all possible user interactions a priori and provide interfaces for each. Moreover, it provides a theoretical, systematic, and implementation-neutral way to design systems and is therefore a timely contribution to the young field of personalization as well as a novel application of generative programming.