User Issues in Social Group Recommender Systems

Social group recommender systems aim to recommend items of interest to a social group or a community of people. The user issues in such systems cannot be addressed by examining the satisfaction of their members as individuals. Rather, group satisfaction should be studied as a result of the interaction and interface methods that support group dynamics and interaction. This report first introduces the background and fundamental design space for social group recommender systems. It continues to present four challenges in such systems. In order to design a system that best meets user satisfaction, it then defines and studies three major affective states in social group environment. The report further presents affective interface design of GroupFun, a music group recommender system. After presenting preliminary work, it proposes areas for future research in pursuit of an affective recommender.