“My Dating Site Thinks I’m a Loser”: Effects of Personal Photos and Presentation Intervals on Perceptions of Recommender Systems

Summary:
When interacting human to human, people perform actions and behave in certain ways to show everyone who they are as a person. When interacting with a computer this kind of representation is very difficult to achieve and sometimes has negative outcomes when the computer is trying to make inferences about what to show the user based on their representation. When the computer makes bad suggestions the user will not only think bad of the system, but it can also trigger behavioral modifications so the user can achieve the wanted representation. Personalized recommendation systems can present their data in 2 ways: Intermittently, as if responding to the user input at random intervals, or at the very end of the users input. This article tested a new web based dating algorithm called MetaMatch. The participants answered a set of questions for the algorithm and no matter what the answers were, the results for each person where the same based off a predetermined set of results. Users filled out a dating questionnaire, viewed the results and then filled out a post-questionnaire about their experiences with the site. Half of the users were given a resulting photo after every 10 questions while the other half where given the resulting photos at the end of the questionnaire. Even though the users were told the system was using their answers to pick results, the results were all predetermined. These results were designed to be undesirable by the users. The results showed that the way data is gathered and presented online has a profound consequence on how the users interact with the site. Frustration levels were highest amongst users who got intermittent results which did not match their desires.

Discussion:
I thought this was an interesting paper because I agree that the way information is presented affects the users perception of the site greatly. This just goes to show that there are correct ways to represent and gather data and that there are incorrect ways to do so as well which foster frustration and user unhappiness with the system. I think this paper should do more studies on not only web dating, but just on website layout in general.