The Magic of Carousels: Single vs. Multi-List Recommender Systems.

Carousel-based interfaces with multiple topic-focused item lists have emerged as a de-facto standard for presenting recommendation results to end-users in real-life recommender systems. In this paper, we attempt to formalize and explain the “magic” power of carousel-based interfaces from a traditional hypertext prospect of navigability. By applying both, formal analysis and a data-driven evaluation, we demonstrate and measure the benefits offered by the carousel-based organization of recommendations. We hope that this work will benefit the researchers in both hypertext and recommender systems communities, where the research on carousel-based interfaces is gaining popularity.