Recommendation Delivery - Getting the User Interface Just Right

Generating a useful recommendation is only the first step in creating a recommendation system. For the system to have value, the recommendations must be delivered with a user interface that allows the user to become aware that recommendations are available, to determine if any of the recommendations have value for them and to be able to act upon a recommendation. By synthesizing previous results from general recommendation system research and software engineering recommendation system research, we discuss the factors that affect whether or not a user considers and accepts recommendations generated by a system. These factors include the ease with which a recommendation can be understood and the level of trust a user assigns to a recommendation. In this chapter, we will describe these factors and the opportunities for future research towards helping getting the user interface of a recommendation system just right. 1 Why Does the User Interface Matter? Recommendation systems for software engineering (RSSEs) can be divided into two parts: the backend that decides what to recommend, and the frontend that delivers the recommendation. In this chapter, we refer to the developer for whom a recommendation is aimed as the user. Toolsmiths, those developers who design and build RSSEs, often focus on the backend, because one clearly has to have something good to recommend before presenting it to the user. Emerson Murphy-Hill North Carolina State University, 890 Oval Drive, Raleigh, NC, United States e-mail: emerson@