CLARITY researchers receive awards at the BCS AI conference

CLARITY researchers Dr Maurice O’Mahony and Professor Barry Smyth have developed a system to improve the helpfulness of online customer reviews. In recognition of the quality of their work, the group received a distinguished paper award at the British Computer Society’s annual Artificial Intelligence Conference on 17 December 2009. The research has been mentioned in the Business section of today’s Irish times (http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/1218/1224260889176.html).

This technique automatically analyses online user-generated reviews based on four key factors: reputation, social, sentiment and content; and determines how helpful the reviews are likely to be to customers before presenting the most helpful first – including both positive and negative reviews. User-generated reviews have become increasingly important when it comes to users making buying decisions. While online product or service reviews have become more common, they tend to vary greatly in their quality and helpfulness. The system devised by the researchers applies machine learning techniques to discover the factors that make for a helpful review. It analyses reviews that have received feedback, and then applies the resulting models to evaluate the helpfulness of the majority of reviews that have little or no feedback.

CLARITY researchers also claimed the award for the Best Technical Paper for their paper entitled "Coping with Noisy Search Experiences" which describes new research on the use of online search engines. The research describes the HeyStaks technology which works with Google and Bing to help users better collaborate while they search. A new start-up company, HeyStaks Technologies Ltd is working to bring this social search technology to the marketplace. The researchers involved in this work include: Professor Barry Smyth, Dr Maurice Coyle, Dr Peter Briggs, from CLARITY (and co-founders of Heystaks Technologies Limited), and by Dr. Pierre-Antoine Champin, a visiting researcher from the University of Lyon.