Graphics and Natural Language as Components of Automatic Explanation

An important component of adaptable interactive systems is the ability to model the system's users. Previous systems have relied on user models tailored to the particular needs of that system alone. This paper presents the notion of a general user model, and describes some of our research on building a general user modelling facility that could be used by a variety of applications. This work focuses on the representation, maintenance, and acquisition issues of modelling long-term beliefs of the user, and describes a general facility for accomplishing these tasks.