"I don't know anything about laptops!" - User Perception of Digital Product Advisors Adapting to Their Knowledge Levels

2026-08-06

AI Summary

This study addresses how digital product advisors can adapt to users’ domain knowledge levels to effectively communicate complex information. Through a chatbot experiment in the context of laptop selection, it compares the effects of technical specifications alone, performance-based categorization, attribute explanations, and their combination (TCE) on novice and expert users. The work proposes inclusive design guidelines for textual advisors in technical domains: defaulting to the TCE combination, maintaining a unified interface, avoiding standalone categorization, and supporting user autonomy and contextual personalization. Results show that novices report significantly higher perceived helpfulness and learning outcomes under explanation-inclusive conditions (TE/TCE), with TCE outperforming baseline approaches in informational appropriateness. Expert users exhibit no significant differences across conditions, confirming that supplementary explanations do not impair their experience.

Abstract

Conversational commerce uses digital assistants to support the search process and decision-making in e-commerce. Effective communication in these interactions can be facilitated by assistants adapting their communication style to users and supporting shared understanding. An open challenge in this context is adapting the presentation of complex product information to users with varying levels of domain knowledge. To investigate strategies for such knowledge-level adaptation, we set up a chatbot-assisted laptop search scenario. In a between-subjects experiment (n = 251), we examined novice and expert perceptions of product attribute recommendations presented as technical information only (T), or augmented with performance categories (TC), attribute explanations (TE), or both (TCE). For novices, approaches with explanations (TE, TCE) were perceived as more helpful and led to higher perceived learning than those without. Novices also rated the combined approach (TCE) more appropriate than the baseline (T) and TC in terms of information quantity, indicating that explanations are crucial to understand and benefit from performance categories. Critically, experts showed no significant differences across conditions, suggesting that providing supplementary information beneficial to novices did not detract from their experience. We distill these findings into four concrete design guidelines for inclusive text-based product advisors in technical domains: use TCE by default; keep a single inclusive interface; avoid standalone categories; and support user agency and personalize to the stated use case.

Problem

• conversational commerce
• knowledge-level adaptation
• product information presentation
• digital assistants
• user perception

Innovation

• knowledge-level adaptation
• conversational commerce
• product advisor
• inclusive design
• attribute explanation