Personalized and adaptive systems employ user models to adapt content services interaction or
navigation to individual users' needs. User models can be inferred from implicitly observed
information such as the user's interaction history or current location or from explicitly
entered information such as user profile data or ratings. Applications of personalization
include item recommendation location-based services learning assistance and the tailored
selection of interaction modalities. With the transition from desktop computers to mobile
devices and ubiquitous environments the need for adapting to changing contexts is even more
important. However this also poses new challenges concerning privacy issues user control
transparency and explainability. In addition user experience and other human factors are
becoming increasingly important. This book describes foundations of user modeling discusses
user interaction as a basis for adaptivity and showcases several personalization approaches in
a variety of domains including music recommendation tourism and accessible user interfaces.
