An Exploratory Work in Using Comparisons Instead of Ratings

Abstract

With the evolution of the Web, users are now encouraged to express their preferences on items. These are often conveyed through a rating value on a multi-point rating scale (for example from one to five). Ratings have however several known drawbacks, such as imprecision and inconsistency. We propose a new modality to express preferences: comparing items (“I prefer x to y”). In this initial work, we conduct two user-studies to understand the possible relevance of comparisons. This work shows that users are favorably predisposed to adopt this new modality. Moreover, it shows that preferences expressed as ratings are coherent with preferences expressed trough comparisons, and to some extent equivalent. As a proof of concept, a recommender is implemented using comparison data, where we show encouraging results when confronted to a classical rating-based recommender. As a consequence, asking users to express their preferences through comparisons, in place of ratings, is a promising new modality for preference-expression.