Designing for web and for printed medium: a comparative study

Ankara : The Department of Graphic Design and the Institute of Fine Arts of Bilkent University, 2001.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2001.Includes bibliographical references.A thesis comparing two methods of design; the web design and design prepared for the printed medium, covering the physical differences between the two, the methods and techniques of content presentation in both cases, as well, as the perception of the design from the reader’s point of view. Includes a case study.Michalski, JakubM.S

A framework for the design of usable electronic text

This thesis examines the human issues underlying the design and usability of electronic text systems. In so doing it develops a framework for the conceptualisation of these issues that aims to guide designers of electronic texts in their attempts to produce usable systems. The thesis commences with a review of the traditional human factors literature on electronic text according to three basic themes: its concern with perceptual, manipulatory and structural issues. From this examination it is concluded that shortcomings in translating this work into design result from the adoption of overly narrow uni-disciplinary views of reading taken from cognitive psychology and information science which are inappropriate to serve the needs of electronic text designers. In an attempt to provide a more relevant description of the reading process a series of studies examining readers and their views as well as uses of texts is reported. In the first, a repertory grid based investigation revealed that all texts can be described in reader-relvant terms according to three criteria: why a text is read, what a text contains and how it is read. These criteria then form the basis of two investigations of reader-text interaction using academic journals and user manuals. The results of these studies highlighted the need to consider readers' models of a document's structure in discussing text usability. Subsequent experimental work on readers' models of academic articles demonstrated not only that such models are important aspects of reader-text interaction but that data of this form could usefully be employed in the design of an electronic text system. The proposed framework provides a broad, qualitative model of the important issues for designers to consider when developing a product It consists of four interactive elements that focus attention on aspects of reading that have been identified as central to usability. Simple tests of the utility and validity of the framework are reported and it is shown that the framework both supports reasoned analysis and subsequent prediction of reader behaviour as well as providing a parsimonious account of their verbal utterances while reading. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the likely uses of such a framework and the potential for electronic text systems in an increasingly information-hungry world

Realistic electronic books

People like books. They are convenient and can be accessed easily and enjoyably. In contrast, many view the experience of accessing and exploring electronic documents as dull, cumbersome and disorientating. This thesis claims that modelling digital documents as physical books can significantly improve reading performance. To investigate this claim, a realistic electronic book model was developed and evaluated. In this model, a range of properties associated with physical books---analogue page turning, bookmarks and annotations---are emulated. Advantage is also taken of the digital environment by supporting hyperlinks, multimedia, full-text search over terms and synonyms, automatically cross referencing documents with an online encyclopaedia, and producing a back-of-the-book index. The main technical challenge of simulating physical books is finding a suitable technique for page turning that is sufficiently realistic, yet lightweight, responsive, scalable and accessible. Several techniques were surveyed, implemented and evaluated. The chosen technique allows realistic books to be presented in the Adobe Flash Player, the most widely used browser plug-in on the Web. A series of usability studies were conducted to compare reading performance while performing various tasks with HTML, PDF, physical books, and simulated books. They revealed that participants not only preferred the new interface, but completed the tasks more efficiently, without any loss in accuracy

Using hypermedia to improve the dissemination and accessibility of syllabus documents with particular reference to primary mathematics

The fundamental question that this study set out to investigate was: Can the advantages of hypermedia be extended to curriculum materials that are for the sole use of teachers? To consider this question, three areas needed to be investigated: hypermedia (the medium); teachers (the target) and curriculum documents (the content). Hypermedia has a long history dating back to Bush (1986) who in 1945 imagined his Memex system as building information trails between ideas. However, it was not until the mid 1980s that technology caught up with the theory and hypermedia came of age. The evaluation of hypermedia documents is still in its infancy and design standards are still being formlulated. Social acceptability and usability will be of major concern in the evaluation process of hypermedia. Therefore this study needed to investigate whether this medium of presentation is socially acceptable to teachers? Advances in Information Technology (IT), both in hardware and software in the last few years have brought the potential of hypermedia to the personal computer (PC). Information, be it text, sound, graphics or video, or a mixture of these, can now be presented on the same screen and the movement between screens can be seamless. The movement between screens is no longer limited to sequential movement as it is when the information is presented in a hard copy form, but can be randomly accessed. This access allows the user to move about the information as they would move about within their own minds, that is, by association. Already commercial hypermedia products are being produced for the education and leisure markets. Teachers\u27 work loads are increasing, as they take on more curriculum responsibilities, while at the same time, information is expanding at a rapid rate. The challenge today is to encourage teachers to use new information technology to overcome these problems. However, since their inception into schools fifteen years ago, computers have not delivered the results that had been expected of them. Can the access to hypermedia curriculum documents help teachers to lessen their work load and encourage them to use IT? Firstly, it is important to consider whether curriculum materials for teacher use are suitable for hypermedia presentation. The literature indicated that textual materials that are not meant to be read sequentially like a novel, arc suitable to be presented in hypermedia form. At present, curriculum materials for teachers contain the content in hard copy form but the presentation is lacking in quality. This hard copy material is expensive, hard to correct and slow to update. Hypermedia offers the potential to overcome these limitations and to provide easy access to much more information. This new medium could allow teachers for the first ti.me to truly integrate their teaching programme by enabling them to access multiple curriculum documents. The methodology used in this study was based on two types of descriptive research, survey and correlation methods. The target population for this study was all K-7 teachers using the Western Australia Mathematics syllabus within Western Australia. The instrument was a mailed survey questionnaire that consisted of five parts. The first part consisted of collecting personal data such as age and gender. The second part was the Computer Attitude Scale (CAS), designed by Loyd and Gressard (1984), and was used to measure attitudes towards learning and using computers. The third part consisted of questions that asked teachers for their views and impressions on the social acceptability and utility of the present hard copy. The fourth part consisted of questions on computer experience and use, both in and outside the classroom. The final part consisted questions on the likely acceptance and usefulness of a hypermedia copy of the syllabus. This study found that the likely medium-based anxiety for this type of application is low for the teachers sampled, with 70 percent indicating that they were likely to accept this type of application. The findings indicated that the acceptance rate increased as the teachers\u27 positive attitude towards computers increased. Teachers that rated themselves competent at using a computer were also more likely to accept this type of application. Time spent using a computer at school showed that teachers who frequently use them at least several times a week were more likely to accept this type of application. The study also found that the majority of teachers sampled considered the ability to link the syllabus to other teaching material was very useful. Many of the problems identified by the teachers sampled concerning the usability of the present hard copy could be overcome using a hypermedia version

The guiding process in discovery hypertext learning environments for the Internet

Hypertext is the dominant method to navigate the Internet, providing user freedom and control over navigational behaviour. There has been an increase in converting existing educational material into Internet web pages but weaknesses have been identified in current WWW learning systems. There is a lack of conceptual support for learning from hypertext, navigational disorientation and cognitive overload. This implies the need for an established pedagogical approach to developing the web as a teaching and learning medium. Guided Discovery Learning is proposed as an educational pedagogy suitable for supporting WWW learning. The hypothesis is that a guided discovery environment will produce greater gains in learning and satisfaction, than a non-adaptive hypertext environment. A second hypothesis is that combining concept maps with this specific educational paradigm will provide cognitive support. The third hypothesis is that student learning styles will not influence learning outcome or user satisfaction. Thus, providing evidence that the guided discovery learning paradigm can be used for many types of learning styles. This was investigated by the building of a guided discovery system and a framework devised for assessing teaching styles. The system provided varying discovery steps, guided advice, individualistic system instruction and navigational control. An 84 subject experiment compared a Guided discovery condition, a Map-only condition and an Unguided condition. Subjects were subdivided according to learning styles, with measures for learning outcome and user satisfaction. The results indicate that providing guidance will result in a significant increase in level of learning. Guided discovery condition subjects, regardless of learning styles, experienced levels of satisfaction comparable to those in the other conditions. The concept mapping tool did not appear to affect learning outcome or user satisfaction. The conclusion was that using a particular approach to guidance would result in a more supportive environment for learning. This research contributes to the need for a better understanding of the pedagogic design that should be incorporated into WWW learning environments, with a recommendation for a guided discovery approach to alleviate major hypertext and WWW issues for distance learning

A Generic Software Library for Creating Multimedia Browse/Search Applications

PhDThis thesis surveys the field of browse/search interactions. The results of this study form the basis of a specification of a representation scheme and a library of access functions which facilitate the creation of information-rich multimedia applications. Evidence is provided for the hypothesis that browsing and searching are the extreme ends of a continuum of data access methods and that many browse/search interactions contain a mixture of both with the ratio varying as the interaction proceeds. These observations motivate the integration of browsing and search facilities so that applications can be built which exhibit both types of information access. This work is tailored to the area of consumer multimedia with a review of the constraints that this imposes on the authoring process and the applications themselves forming part of this work. The specification of the functionality of the function library, together with its implementation and testing are described in detail. The library has been evaluated by constructing a number of prototype applications which demonstrate the utility and scope of the library

The Ostensive Model of Developing Information-Needs

From intuitions and informal observations of searching behaviour, a formal model is developed of cognition during a searching session. The model is of the iterative updating of an information-need by exposure of a user to information during a session. The model is path-based - using trends within the content of objects on a path to predict the current information-need. This provides contextual interpretation of objects based upon the path taken to an object. The model is ostensive in nature; however, instead of the active communicated evidence of traditional conceptions of ostension, it uses passive observational evidence. It produces a new notion of relevance: Ostensive Relevance - profiles of which are the key to the effective use of path information. The integration of the Ostensive Model and the Binary Probabilistic Model is achieved by weakening of a conventional assumption in the estimation of a probabilistic parameter. This integration effects a novel combination of objective and subjective probabilities - commonly regarded as incompatible. The Ostensive Model is instantiated in a combination of a networked IR server and a novel graphical user-interface. The interface presents a fish-eyed view of a growing multi-path browsing surface that hides internal representations and obviates querying. The hiding of internals, combined with the ability of the Ostensive Model to follow a developing information-need, makes the interface a truly media-neutral searching environment. A new test collection of general interest images with four binary relevance assessments is constructed and used for an evaluation of three Ostensive Relevance Profiles. The results are analysed in the light of different interpretations of the multiple assessments of the test-collection. The evaluation method is itself analysed and concrete proposals made for its development. The results of the evaluation provide strong encouragement for the Ostensive approach

The Semantic Shadow : Combining User Interaction with Context Information for Semantic Web-Site Annotation

This thesis develops the concept of the Semantic Shadow (SemS), a model for managing contentual and structural annotations on web page elements and their values. The model supports a contextual weighting of the annotated information, allowing to specify the annotation values in relation to the evaluation context. A procedure is presented, which allows to manage and process this context-dependent meta information on web page elements using a dedicated programming interface. Two distinct implementations for the model have been developed: One based on Java objects, the other using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as modeling backend. This RDF-based storage allows to integrate the annotations of the Semantic Shadow with other information of the Semantic Web. To demonstrate the application of the Semantic Shadow concept, a procedure to optimize web based user interfaces based on the structural semantics has been developed: Assuming a mobile client, a requested web page is dynamically adapted by a proxy prototype, where the context-awareness of the adaptation can be directly modeled alongside with the structural annotations. To overcome the drawback of missing annotations for existing web pages, this thesis introduces a concept to derive context-dependent meta-information on the web pages from their usage: From the observation of the users' interaction with a web page, certain context-dependent structural information about the concerned web page elements can be derived and stored in the annotation model of the Semantic Shadow concept.In dieser Arbeit wird das Konzept des Semantic Shadow (dt. Semantischer Schatten) entwickelt, ein Programmier-Modell um Webseiten-Elemente mit inhaltsbezogenen und strukturellen Anmerkungen zu versehen. Das Modell unterstützt dabei eine kontextabhängige Gewichtung der Anmerkungen, so dass eine Anmerkung in Bezug zum Auswertungs-Kontext gesetzt werden kann. Zur Verwaltung und Verarbeitung dieser kontextbezogenen Meta-Informationen für Webseiten-Elemente wurde im Rahmen der Arbeit eine Programmierschnittstelle definiert. Dazu wurden zwei Implementierungen der Schnittstelle entwickelt: Eine basiert ausschließlich auf Java-Objekten, die andere baut auf einem RDF-Modell auf. Die RDF-basierte Persistierung erlaubt eine Integration der Semantic-Shadow-Anmerkungen mit anderen Anwendungen des Semantic Webs. Um die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten des Semantic-Shadow-Konzepts darzustellen, wurde eine Vorgehensweise zur Optimierung von webbasierten Benutzerschnittstellen auf Grundlage von semantischen Strukturinformationen entwickelt: Wenn ein mobiler Benutzer eine Webseite anfordert, wird diese dynamisch durch einen Proxy angepasst. Die Kontextabhängigkeit dieser Anpassung wird dabei bereits direkt mit den Struktur-Anmerkungen modelliert. Für bestehende Webseiten liegen zumeist keine Annotationen vor. Daher wird in dieser Arbeit ein Konzept vorgestellt, kontextabhängige Meta-Informationen aus der Benutzung der Webseiten zu bestimmen: Durch Beobachtung der Benutzer-Interaktionen mit den Webseiten-Elementen ist es möglich bestimmte kontextabhängige Strukturinformationen abzuleiten und als Anmerkungen im Modell des Semantic-Shadow-Konzepts zu persistieren

Navigational patterns in interactive multimedia

The central purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether users have distinct preferences for specific navigational patterns in multimedia: that is preferences for moving through multimedia. Subsidiary questions are whether users have preferences for working strategies, (the mental approach to investigating software) whether these preferences are similar for specific groups and whether these preferences are affected by the software's system and navigational design. Four groups were investigated within two ranges: children to adults, and novices to experts. The literature review revealed four different perspectives of investigating navigation: user, designer, pedagogy and human computer interaction and although this research concentrates on the first two perspectives the other two are integral and of equal importance.Two empirical studies elicited the navigational information. The first studied pairs of children undertaking set tasks in multimedia, and demonstrated that although each pair had definite preferences, each group did not utilise the full pattern range discerned from the observations, literature review and multimedia package analysis. The second study was redesigned using individual adults to ascertain the full range of preferred patterns in use. The essential element from the investigations was the wide range of variation between individuals and within groups. There was a gradual progression in their range and speed using these patterns, related to their skills, abilities and experience, and each individual could be placed along a continuum. Topologies of the multimedia packages and diagrams of the fit of the navigation patterns were included. Finally an expert panel was convened to verify the pattern range and their comments supported the new classification.The research outcomes included navigational patterns and working strategies classifications, future techniques for designers, and user methods. These will create more successful and informed multimedia, and forward developments and improvements in the design of high quality user preference software