Emerson Murphy-Hill, Gail C. Murphy
Generating a useful recommendation is only the first step in creating a recommendation system. For the system to have value, the recommendations must be delivered with a user interface that allows the user to become aware that recommendations are available, to determine if any of the recommendations have value for them and to be able to act upon a recommendation. By synthesizing previous results from general recommendation system research and software engineering recommendation system research, we discuss the factors that affect whether or not a user considers and accepts recommendations generated by a system. These factors include the ease with which a recommendation can be understood and the level of trust a user assigns to a recommendation. In this chapter, we will describe these factors and the opportunities for future research towards helping getting the user interface of a recommendation system just right.