Since the idea of the user model was introduced in the previous hypermedia presentation (See it here), the focus here will be an overview of how the user model is viewed in the Adaptive Hypermedia Application Model.

AHAM User Model

• The user model in the Adaptive Hypermedia Application Model is a list of entities that have associated attribute/value pairs
• A table structure is most often used to represent the user model
• Most often concepts from the domain model end up as entities. This seems a bit confusing, but what it means is that domain model related concepts such as "knowledge" (about a concept), read (to denote that a page or fragment was read by the user), or ready-to-read (to denote that the user is "ready" to view information about the concept or to read the page. [WDD01]

Is it persistent or is it volitile?

• The user model actually has a persistent part and a volatile part
• Certain entities such as user preferences, or background information would be part of the persistent as they would be changed by the system
• Entities such as "read" or "ready-to-read" maybe calculated, or recalculated at different times during the users session.