Different from the data sparsity that traditional recommendations suffer from, context-aware recommender systems (CARS) face specific sparsity challenges related to contextual features, i.e., feature sparsity and interaction sparsity. How knowledge graphs address these challenges remains under-discussed. To bridge this gap, in this article, we first propose a novel pairwise intent graph containing nodes of users, items, entities, and enhanced intents to integrate knowledge graphs into CARS efficiently. Enhanced intent nodes are generated through the specific fusion of relational sub-intent and contextual sub-intent, and they are derived from semantic information and contextual information, respectively. We develop a pairwise intent graph embedding learning (PING) framework based on it. Specifically, our PING uses a pairwise intent joint graph convolution module to obtain refined embedding of all the features, where each enhanced intent node acts as a hub to effectively propagate information among different features and between all the features and knowledge graphs. Then, a recommendation module with refined embeddings is used to replace the randomly initialized embeddings of downstream recommendation models to improve model performance. Extensive experiments on three public datasets and some real-world scenarios verify the effectiveness and compatibility of our PING.

We develop a Personal Knowledge Graph Question-Answering (PKGQA) assistant, seamlessly integrating information from multiple mobile applications into a unified and user-friendly query interface to offer users convenient information retrieval and personalized knowledge services. Based on a fine-grained schema customized for PKG, the PKGQA system in this paper comprises Symbolic Semantic Parsing, Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) Semantic Matching, and Neural Semantic Parsing modules, which are designed to take into account both accuracy and efficiency. The PKGQA system achieves high accuracy on the constructed dataset and demonstrates good performance in answering complex questions. Our system is implemented through an Android application, which is shown in https://youtu.be/p732U5KPEq4.

Although knowledge graph has shown their effectiveness in mitigating data sparsity in many recommendation tasks, they remain underutilized in context-aware recommender systems (CARS) with the specific sparsity challenges associated with the contextual features, i.e., feature sparsity and interaction sparsity. To bridge this gap, in this paper, we propose a novel pairwise intent graph embedding learning (PING) framework to efficiently integrate knowledge graphs into CARS. Specifically, our PING contains three modules: 1) a graph construction module is used to obtain a pairwise intent graph (PIG) containing nodes for users, items, entities, and enhanced intent, where enhanced intent nodes are generated by applying user intent fusion (UIF) on relational intent and contextual intent, and two sub-intents are derived from the semantic information and contextual information, respectively; 2) a pairwise intent joint graph convolution module is used to obtain the refined embeddings of all the features by executing a customized convolution strategy on PIG, where each enhanced intent node acts as a hub to efficiently propagate information among different features and between all the features and knowledge graph; 3) a recommendation module with the refined embeddings is used to replace the randomly initialized embeddings of downstream recommendation models to improve model performance. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on three public datasets to verify the effectiveness and compatibility of our PING.

Debiased recommendation with a randomized dataset has shown very promising results in mitigating system-induced biases. However, it still lacks more theoretical insights or an ideal optimization objective function compared with the other more well-studied routes without a randomized dataset. To bridge this gap, we study the debiasing problem from a new perspective and propose to directly minimize the upper bound of an ideal objective function, which facilitates a better potential solution to system-induced biases. First, we formulate a new ideal optimization objective function with a randomized dataset. Second, according to the prior constraints that an adopted loss function may satisfy, we derive two different upper bounds of the objective function: a generalization error bound with triangle inequality and a generalization error bound with separability. Third, we show that most existing related methods can be regarded as the insufficient optimization of these two upper bounds. Fourth, we propose a novel method called debiasing approximate upper bound ( DUB ) with a randomized dataset, which achieves a more sufficient optimization of these upper bounds. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on a public dataset and a real product dataset to verify the effectiveness of our DUB.

Most methods for context-aware recommendation focus on improving the feature interaction layer, but overlook the embedding layer. However, an embedding layer with random initialization often suffers in practice from the sparsity of the contextual features, as well as the interactions between the users (or items) and context. In this paper, we propose a novel user-event graph embedding learning (UEG-EL) framework to address these two sparsity challenges. Specifically, our UEG-EL contains three modules: 1) a graph construction module is used to obtain a user-event graph containing nodes for users, intents and items, where the intent nodes are generated by applying intent node attention (INA) on nodes of the contextual features; 2) a user-event collaborative graph convolution module is designed to obtain the refined embeddings of all features by executing a new convolution strategy on the user-event graph, where each intent node acts as a hub to efficiently propagate the information among different features; 3) a recommendation module is equipped to integrate some existing context-aware recommendation model, where the feature embeddings are directly initialized with the obtained refined embeddings. Moreover, we identify a unique challenge of the basic framework, that is, the contextual features associated with too many instances may suffer from noise when aggregating the information. We thus further propose a simple but effective variant, i.e., UEG-EL-V, in order to prune the information propagation of the contextual features. Finally, we conduct extensive experiments on three public datasets to verify the effectiveness and compatibility of our UEG-EL and its variant.

Mobile internet users generate personal data on the devices all the time in this era. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel system for integrating the data of a user from different sources into a Personal Knowledge Graph, i.e., PKG. We show how a user's intention can be detected and how the personal data can be aligned and connected by the user behaviors. The constructed PKG allows the system makes reasonable and accurate recommendations for users by a "neural + symbolic'' approach across different services. Our system is shown in https://youtu.be/hWuo8KCDrto.

To meet the increasing requirements of HCI researchers who are prototyping a variety of forms to create novel interfaces under a ubiquitous situation, we present WeaveMesh, a low-fidelity and low-cost rapid prototyping system that produces 3D objects in a mesh structure. Inspired by hand-weaving craft, WeaveMesh supports a highly customizable software platform, which is applicable for simulating and facilitating freeform surface constructions composed of woven lines arranged in a regular grid, which can serve as a guide for easy assembly. In addition, mobilizable connectors are suggested to support flexible assembly, which can be revised, recycled, and reused to facilitate short iterations. Furthermore, compared to common additive and subtractive techniques, WeaveMesh has a better balance between time and material saving. In this paper, we will introduce the system in detail and demonstrate the feasibility of the technique through various 3D models in the area of interactive media, products and architecture.

There is a prosperity in wearable media in data monitoring. Since the apparel can show personal tastes, emotions and attitudes, what if our clothes could express affective information throughout different situations? This paper presents a system for enhancing the experience of situated-base affective communication by information visualization. The paper discusses the leading features in a variety of specific contexts such as the information monitoring, the remote communication and the customization.