Intelligent interaction

I am very new to this list but felt that my work may be relevant in this area, I shall keep this brief,

I am working in intelligent online legal information presentation - serve the client a large complex document and using rule based techniques reprocess it into something more relevant. The subject matter I am working with is online legal advice such as benefit and social security. e.g.(http://www.dss.gov.uk/ba/index.htm) I am trying to improve the presentation and interaction of this form of information.

In order to query a client I have designed a simple mark-up that is incorporated alongside current HTML. This mark-up defines a knowledge base for the HTML document. A browser side expert system is then used to process, query and alter the source document to provide a more relevant result for the client. (Adding/removing of text segments, alteration of font styles to highlight/subdue relevant/non-relevant sections). Initial experiments have proved very successful, authors can now extend there expertise in a subject beyond the simple publication of a document, the document can now interact with you in an intelligent manner.

The cross over between my work and a voice browser is the means of interaction. The browser is asking the user a question, the query string is known and can easily be synthesised. In most cases the responses are also known from simple yes/no to more complex multiple choices (open question are possible but make voice recognition more problematic). I believe that this form of intelligent interaction designed to provide more relevant information, coupled with a navigational voice system could introduce a new and exciting area in WWW browser design.

Currently I would like to implement a prototype closely tied into a browser, secondly I am lacking a good mark-up that provides a STANDARD means of formulating a knowledge base within a HTML document. If we are hoping to speak and listen to a user then we must appear to do it intelligently.

Please contact me if you would like more details of my work, I would be interested in any feedback or comments.

regards,

Christopher Royles,
Liverpool University.

royles@csc.liv.ac.uk, http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~royles