Do We Know What the User Knows, and Does It Matter? The Epistemics of User Modelling

Abstract

Whilst many user models can function perfectly adequately with a behavioural impression of the user, the provision of assistance in some task domains, notably design, requires a richer understanding, incorporating information about the user’s knowledge and beliefs. This raises a number of important and difficult questions: How can we know what the user knows, and how can we know that we know? We present evidence that the psychological view of human conceptual knowledge that underpins typical approaches to these questions is flawed. We argue that user knowledge can be modelled, up to a point, but that to ask whether or not we can know what the user knows is to misunderstand the question.