1. Technical Field
The present teaching relates to methods, systems, and programming for matching people with choices.
2. Discussion of Technical Background
People need and want different things for physical survival (e.g., food and water) or mental desires (e.g., respect and fame). With the advances of our society, on the other hand, more and more choices have become available, which may arouse new needs and wants of people. Although modern technologies, such as the Internet and the search engines, have helped people to fulfill their needs and wants, finding exactly what they need and want is still challenging. First, without properly labeled choices, it is difficult for people to find which choices, such as a product, a service, or a job position, satisfy their specific needs and wants. Second, a person may not know exactly what he/she wants thus is unable to articulate his/her needs and wants.
Existing approaches for helping people find what they want have many drawbacks. For example, using a user's search query to approximate the user's needs may not capture the user's true needs or deeper desires, because it is quite difficult for a person to find hotels that “make me feel prestigious” or dresses that “make me stand out and respectable.” In another example, a collaborative filtering approach requires prior user behavior and does not work well in a situation where user behavior does not exist or is sparse.
Therefore, there is a need to develop techniques for matching people with choices to overcome the above challenges and drawbacks.