I’m excited to share the draft of our book, co-authored by ChengXiang Zhai, User Simulation for Evaluating Information Access Systems: http://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08550
This book focuses on providing a thorough understanding of user simulation techniques designed specifically for evaluation purposes. We systematically review both general frameworks and specific models and algorithms for simulating user interactions with search engines, recommender systems, and conversational assistants.
We invite feedback on this first version. If you have suggestions, comments, pointers, etc. reach out to me in email!