How does the computer meet man? State of the art and experiments for user modeling in information systems

User models are an important step on the way to fully-automated information processing. Since they support human computer interaction, they raise acce ptance of application systems. Additionally, they help to search and filter information on the Internet and personalize presentations. Nevertheless, p ractitioners hesitate to integrate user modeling components into commercial applications. A glance at some of our own experiments outlines pragmatic e xamples.