Towards a Practice-Led Research Agenda for User Interface Design of Recommender Systems

The design of recommender systems' graphical user interfaces (GUIs) is critical for a user's experience with these systems. However, most research into recommenders focuses on algorithms, overlooking the design of their interfaces. Additionally, the studies on the design of recommender interfaces that do exist do not always manage to cross the research-practice gap. This disconnect may be due to a lack of alignment between academic focus and the most pressing needs of practitioners, as well as the way research findings are communicated. To address these issues, this paper presents the results of a comprehensive study involving 215 designers worldwide, aiming to identify the primary challenges in designing recommender GUIs and the resources practitioners need to tackle those challenges. Building on these findings, this paper proposes a practice-led research agenda for the human-computer interaction community on designing recommender interfaces and suggestions for more accessible and actionable ways of disseminating research results in this domain.