Personalization

Key takeaways

Personalization belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Personalization to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Personalization from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals. It is sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. Personalization involves collecting data on individuals, including web browsing history, web cookies, and location. Various organizations use personalization (along with the opposite mechanism of popularization) to improve customer satisfaction, digital sales conversion, marketing results, branding, and improved website metrics as well as for advertising. Personalization acts as a key element in social media and recommender systems. Personalization influences every sector of society—be it work, leisure, or citizenship.

History The idea of personalization is rooted in ancient rhetoric as part of the practice of an agent or communicator being responsive to the needs of the audience. When industrialization influenced the rise of mass communication, the practice of message personalization diminished for a time. In the recent times, there has been a significant increase in the number of mass media outlets that use advertising as a primary revenue stream. These companies gain knowledge about the specific demographic and psychographic characteristics of readers and viewers. After that, this information is used to personalize an audience's experience and therefore draw customers in through the use of entertainment and information that interests them.

Digital media and the Internet Another aspect of personalization is the increasing relevance of open data on the Internet. Many organizations make their data available on the Internet via APIs, web services, and open data standards. One such example is Ordnance Survey Open Data. Data made available in this way is structured to allow it to be inter-connected and used again by third parties. Data available from a user's social graph may be accessed by third-party application software so that it fits the personalized web page or information appliance. Current open data standards on the Internet are:

Attention Profiling Mark-up Language (APML) DataPortability OpenID OpenSocial

Websites Web pages can be personalized based on their users' characteristics (interests, social category, context, etc.), actions (click on a button, open a link, etc.), intents (make a purchase, check the status of an entity), or any other parameter that is prevalent and associated with an individual. Personalization can also be based on a user's location data. This provides a tailored user experience. Note that the experience is not just the accommodation of the user but a relationship between the user and the desires of the site designers in driving specific actions to attain objectives (e.g. Increase sales conversion on a page). The term customization is often used when the site only uses explicit data which include product ratings or user preferences. Technically, web personalization can be accomplished by associating a visitor segment with a predefined action. Customizing the user experience based on behavioral, contextual, and technical data is proven to have a positive impact on conversion rate optimization efforts. Associated actions can be anything from changing the content of a webpage, presenting a modal display, presenting interstitials, triggering a personalized email, or even automating a phone call to the user. According to a study conducted in 2014 at the research firm Econsultancy, less than 30% of e-commerce websites have invested in the field of web personalization. However, many companies now offer services for web personalization as well as web and email recommendation systems that are based on personalization or anonymously collected user behaviors. There are many categories of web personalization which includes:

Behavioral Contextual Technical Historic data Collaboratively filtered There are several camps in defining and executing web personalization. A few broad methods for web personalization include:

Implicit Explicit Hybrid With implicit personalization, personalization is performed based on data learned from indirect observations of the user. This data can be, for example, items purchased on other sites or pages viewed. With explicit personalization, the web page (or information system) is changed by the user using the features provided by the system. Hybrid personalization combines the above two approaches to leverage both explicit user actions on the system and implicit data. Web personalization can be linked to the notion of adaptive hypermedia (AH). The main difference is that the former would usually work on what is considered "open corpus hypermedia", while the latter would traditionally work on "closed corpus hypermedia." However, recent research directions in the AH domain take both closed and open corpus into account, making the two fields very inter-related. Personalization is also being considered for use in less open commercial applications to improve the user experience in the online world. Internet activist Eli Pariser has documented personalized search, where Google and Yahoo! News give different results to different people (even when logged out). He also points out social media site Facebook changes user's friend feeds based on what it thinks they want to see. This creates a clear filter bubble. Websites use a visitor's location data to adjust content, design, and the entire functionality. On an intranet or B2E Enterprise Web portals, personalization is often based on user attributes such as department, functional area, or the specified role. The term "customization" in this context refers to the ability of users to modify the page layout or specify what content should be displayed.

Map personalization

Digital web maps are also being personalized. Google Maps change the content of the map based on previous searches and profile information. Technology writer Evgeny Morozov criticized map personalization as a threat to public space. With the wider use of "AI" models into the 2020s, the personalization of map applications has become mainstream.

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Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Personalization

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Personalization claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Personalization before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Personalization ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Personalization

In research: Personalization appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Personalization in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Personalization is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Human–computer interaction, Information retrieval techniques, Recommender systems, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Personalization outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Personalization in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Personalization means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Personalization out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Personalization in simple terms?

Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or product to accommodate specific individuals. It is sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals.

Why does Personalization matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Personalization?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Personalization.