MIT researchers: morphing Web sites could bring riches

The problem I see is in needing a few clicks before you can guess the user's cognitive style. I would assume users visit the most important pages first, so by the time you can guess at their cognitive style they've probably gone as far as they'll go. (And I think it'd disruptive to change the content of pages they've already visited.)

Maybe browsers themselves could determine users' cognitive style over time and send that info when you visit a site.

The paper [pdf]: http://web.mit.edu/hauser/www/Papers/Hauser_Urban_Liberali_B...

Too bad networkworld.com couldn't deduce that I hate splash ads, and breaking a story up into three pages. :)

Does anyone see one of the problems with this approach? What if a user visits a site multiple times, and searches the website, looking for new/different information that they have not found previously - would they have a different experience?

Would this lead to people being lost in multiple forms of the same site? Even if you tried to track a user, unless you force people to sign in w/ an account, most likely it will be impossible to tell if the same user has returned.

What about link sharing? This site, yc, is all about sharing links and information. Would this break existing link sharing sites? Wouldn't there at least be a cognitive difference between people in discussions of a site using this software?

And still yet, would an approach such as this give users the feeling of personallization and a better user experience or disenfranchisement of a constantly changing layout/experience?

Although something like this combined w/ socialhistory.js would be really nice; that way you could ensure one form over another with greater accuracy and no need for a click history on the site - the information would already be available.

any link to the open source software package?

I am frustrated because I have typed up 6 comments that I promptly erased because I don't know if I would be violating an NDA I signed. Great article though!

Thinking on this I will probably think twice before ever signing another NDA, it is extremely frustrating not to be able to talk on such and interesting subject.