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Expert Systems with Applications 29 (2005) 17–32 www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa NAMA: a context-aware multi-agent based web service approach to proactive need identification for personalized reminder systems O. Kwona,*, Sungchul Choib, Gyuro Parkb aSchool of International Management, Kyunghee University, 449701 YonginSi, South Korea bSchool of Management and Economics, Handong University, 791708 PohangSi, South Korea Abstract Developing a personalized, user-centric system is one of today’s challenging issues in ubiquitous network-based systems, especially personalized reminder systems. Such a personalized reminder system has to identify the user’s current needs dynamically and proactively based on the user’s current context, such as location and current activity. However, need identification methodologies and their feasible architectures for personalized reminder systems have so far been rare. Hence, this paper aims to propose a proactive need identification mechanism by applying agent and semantic web technologies for a personalized reminder system, which is one of the supporting systems for a robust ubiquitous service support environment. We revisit associationism in order to understand a buyer’s need identification process, and we adopt the process as ‘purchase based on association’ to implement a personalized reminder system. Based on this approach, we have shown how an agent-based semantic web service system can be used to realize a personalized reminder system which identifies a buyer’s need autonomously. We have created a prototype system, NAMA (Need Aware Multi-Agent), to demonstrate the feasibility of the methodology and of the mobile settings framework that we propose in this paper. NAMA embeds a Bluetooth-based location-tracking module and identifies what users are currently looking at through their mobile devices. Based on these capabilities, NAMA considers the context, user profile with preferences, and information about currently available services to discover the user’s current needs and then link the user to a set of services, which are implemented as web services. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Semantic web; Ontology; Agent technology; Context awareness; Reminder system; Personalization; Web service 1. Introduction product purchases may be applied to a user evaluation system or to discovery mechanisms by data mining (Fu, One of the major issues of intelligent electronic Budzik, & Hammond, 2000; O’Connor, Cosley, Konstan, & commerce is to develop a need identification system;a Riedl, 2001; Shardanand & Maes, 1995). An effective personalized reminder system to address user’s needs in the personalized mechanism should also include adaptive electronic commerce marketplace. Our proposed reminder behavior, allowing the system to change based on implicit system differentiates itself from traditional marketing user behavior or requests. These changing capabilities are information systems or supply chain management systems often based on learning capability to adapt user’s purchase in that the reminder system individually interacts with the behavior (Weld et al., 2003). user to support a more personalized, individual focus, such This personalization may also be useful in the context of as helping the user find a specific product. A reminder mobile services. Users with mobile devices surf the web to system, as well as a recommendation system, has been perform tasks, such as reading or writing messages, to seek proposed as one of the personalized intelligent systems to information, or just to pass time. Information seeking in support electronic commerce (Lee & Yang, 2003; Wang & particular becomes an interesting behavior for a reminder Shao, 2004). Therefore, to do so, the user’s preferences on system since the behavior is predictable. Proteus and Minpath are personalized tools that support information seeking activities (Anderson & Bower, 1973). Such a * Corresponding author. Tel.: C82 31 201 2306; fax: C82 31 204 8114. system finds information seeking patterns from the past E-mail address: [email protected] (O. Kwon). experiences of user interaction, and tries to automatically 0957-4174/$ - see front matter q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2005.01.001 18 O. Kwon et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 29 (2005) 17–32 personalize contents of the web page for each separate association, especially within a mobile e-commerce visitor. Another product, Autominder, applies artificial environment. intelligence techniques such as temporal reasoning and So far, today’s reminder systems are limited, with some reasoning under uncertainty in planning and performing important deficiencies. One is that user preferences are not personalized service. Autominder also uses complicated shared or understood by legacy mobile service systems. One intrinsic scheduling rules which are difficult to be modified of the reasons is that user preferences are hard-coded in the automatically (McCarthy & Pollack, 2002; Pollack et al., reminder system. These preferences are neither visible nor 2003). accessible, which renders the entire system weak in Most of the reminder systems today only provide ‘sharability’. Moreover, since current reminder systems structured and routine information such as daily schedule depend on a single knowledge storage, if the number of information. Moreover, the majority of reminder systems candidate products increases dynamically, it becomes lack flexibility: since they do not today incorporate any increasingly difficult and expensive to maintain system user-centric need identification mechanism to adapt auto- knowledge. Because of these limitations, this information matically to changing conditions. should be sharable and machine-understandable in the Meanwhile, the end result, of a buyer’s need being met reminder system. To do so, an agent-based semantic web by a purchase, is composed of multiple associated factors service could be a solution. In semantic web services, user resulting from external stimulus called context. These kinds preference information can be managed in machine-under- of user purchase behaviors can be explained by associative standable and sharable forms. Moreover, very few legacy theory first proposed by David Hartley, and developed by reminder systems utilize context data for context-aware James Mill: every awareness is derived from experience in intelligent reminder services. Only a few adopt a location- order to inference specific, simple, but powerful associ- based service. Using diversified context would facilitate a ations. The associative theory, which originates from higher number of reminder systems being able to offer Aristotle’s philosophy, still has yet been defined as a unified interesting context-aware services. theory (Leahey, 1994; Young, 1968). However, at least, Hence, this paper proposes an architecture that applies an most of the association-related theories have suggested the agent-based semantic web service that is based on following four common concepts and principles (Anderson associative theory; we also show how this architecture can & Bower, 1973): be applied to develop a needs-aware reminder system which considers full-fledged context data, including the factors † Association is any ideas or elements of mind that result such as time, identity, location, and entity that Abowd from experience. (1999) has classified. The need awareness in a mobile † Association is any thoughts that have been derived from setting is supported by identifying user profiles and the accumulation of simple ideas. preferences, collecting user context in real-time, need † These simple ideas are generated from fundamental and identification, and providing push-based service. To do so, unstructured senses. a personalized user information storage system called e- † The simple and cumulative rules allow one to predict the wallet is applied. E-wallet is a web-based agent system that composite attributes from the fundamental and simple selectively allows visiting agents that are employed by attributes of ideas. external systems to get users’ private data such as profile, preferences, and individual context. The user’s current In short, associative theory attempts to remodel human location is available via a Bluetooth-based location tracking awareness by applying superficial experiences and minimal method, and the URLs she is viewing with her mobile theoretical assumptions. The theory tries to illustrate how a device are adopted as user context. To show the feasibility concept is derived from many fragments of ideas, and also is of this proposed system, we implemented the need-aware transformed to a general systematical concept such as reminder system architecture proposed in this paper, awareness and reminder (Leahey, 1994). It is also congruent NAMA (Need Aware Multi-Agent). NAMA is a semantic as a kind of ‘hyperlink’ which helps to establish links to web service that is aware of the URL address and the different ideas or examples. For example, someone reading contents that user’s concentration is focused on. It interprets an article about a house might realize that he himself would the content as context data and conjectures what the user like to buy a house, or that he should talk with a financial might want to purchase by correlating public information planner about his real estate investments. This situation can with the user’s individual personalized concept and knowl- only be illustrated if we know that the person has strong edge that it has ‘learned’, and it cooperates with

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