2 research outputs found
An analysis framework for CSCW systems
Software toolkits are under development to help construct applications that support
group-working. Toolkit developers adopt different approaches to group-work support
in order to tackle different issues and a toolkit is commonly characterised by the
approach adopted. It is difficult to compare toolkits because of this lack of apparent
commonality and it is difficult to decide which toolkits meet specific application
requirements. [Continues.
Supporting multimedia user interface design using mental models and representational expressiveness
This thesis addresses the problem of output media allocation in the design of
multimedia user interfaces. The literature survey identifies a formal definition of the
representational capabilities of different media.as important in this task. Equally
important, though less prominent in the literature, is that the correct mental model of
a domain is paramount for the successful completion of tasks.
The thesis proposes an original linguistic and cognitive based descriptive framework,
in two parts. The first part defines expressiveness, the amount of representational
abstraction a medium provides over any domain. The second part describes how this
expressiveness is linked to the mental models that media induce, and how this in turn
affects task performance. It is postulated that the mental models induced by different
media, will reflect the abstractive representation those media offer over the task
domain. This must then be matched to the abstraction required by tasks to allow them
to be effectively accomplished.
A 34 subject experiment compares five media, of two levels of expressiveness, over a
range of tasks, in a complex and dynamic domain. The results indicate that
expressiveness may allow media to be matched more closely to tasks, if the mental
models they are known to induce are considered.
Finally, the thesis proposes a tentative framework for media allocation, and two
example interfaces are designed using this framework. This framework is based on
the matching of expressiveness to the abstraction of a domain required by tasks. The
need for the methodology to take account of the user's cognitive capabilities is
stressed, and the experimental results are seen as the beginning of this procedure