Organizing information on the next generation web - Design and implementation of a new bookmark structure

The next-generation Web will increase the need for a highly organized and ever evolving method to store references to Web objects. These requirements could be realized by the development of a new bookmark structure. This paper endeavors to identify the key requirements of such a bookmark, specifically in relation to Web documents, and sets out a suggested design through which these needs may be accomplished. A prototype developed offers such features as the sharing of bookmarks between users and groups of users. Bookmarks for Web documents in this prototype allow more specific information to be stored such as: URL, the document type, the document title, keywords, a summary, user annotations, date added, date last visited and date last modified. Individuals may access the service from anywhere on the Internet, as long as they have a Java-enabled Web browser

Generating trails automatically, to aid navigation when you revisit an environment

A new method for generating trails from a person’s movement through a virtual environment (VE) is described. The method is entirely automatic (no user input is needed), and uses string-matching to identify similar sequences of movement and derive the person’s primary trail. The method was evaluated in a virtual building, and generated trails that substantially reduced the distance participants traveled when they searched for target objects in the building 5-8 weeks after a set of familiarization sessions. Only a modest amount of data (typically five traversals of the building) was required to generate trails that were both effective and stable, and the method was not affected by the order in which objects were visited. The trail generation method models an environment as a graph and, therefore, may be applied to aiding navigation in the real world and information spaces, as well as VEs

Effects of hyperlinks on navigation in virtual environments

Hyperlinks introduce discontinuities of movement to 3-D virtual environments (VEs). Nine independent attributes of hyperlinks are defined and their likely effects on navigation in VEs are discussed. Four experiments are described in which participants repeatedly navigated VEs that were either conventional (i.e. obeyed the laws of Euclidean space), or contained hyperlinks. Participants learned spatial knowledge slowly in both types of environment, echoing the findings of previous studies that used conventional VEs. The detrimental effects on participants' spatial knowledge of using hyperlinks for movement were reduced when a time-delay was introduced, but participants still developed less accurate knowledge than they did in the conventional VEs. Visual continuity had a greater influence on participants' rate of learning than continuity of movement, and participants were able to exploit hyperlinks that connected together disparate regions of a VE to reduce travel time

PROVIDING INFORMATION SYSTEMS WITH FULL HYPERMEDIA FUNCTIONALITY

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems. In this paper I present the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage fill hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented âfront-end" systems with separate computation-oriented "back-end "systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. I then describe a set of minimal requirements for integrating the hypermedia engine. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

MONADIC VISUALIZATION OF METADATA NETWORKS TO SUPPORT EXPLORATORY BROWSING

Interactive data visualizations tend to either show an entire collection or the individual element. For example, a page of search results shows the whole, while clicking on an individual link shifts focus to the individual. With these kinds of interfaces, it can be difficult to understand how individual pieces relates to each other and maintain a sense of place amongst the network being perused. To address this, I develop a focus+context browsing tool that uses a monadic approach to visualizing networks of semantic information in the form of metadata summaries. Focus+context visualizations present both the full detail of an object and the contextual information needed to relate that object to the entirety. The monadic approach, first suggested by sociologist Gabriel Tarde, is the idea that a network is best comprehended from the perspective of individual elements. This stands in opposition to the standard approach of viewing the entirety of the network at once. Semantic information, such as product specs and bibliography, provides essential and valuable contexts for people to make sense of information, assess values, and make decisions. I present a study, in which participants explored networks of academic publications, showed that a monadic metadata visualization helps users explore networked information, understand relationships, and maintain focus, when compared with traditional methods. Allowing the user to traverse the network laterally while using metadata to provide a summary of the focus node serves to maximize the amount of focus and context available to the user

ON INTEGRATING HYPERMEDIA INTO DECISION SUPPORT AND OTHER INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems that interact with people. Hypermedia is a concept involving access to information, embodying the notions of context-sensitive navigation, annotation and tailored presentation. We present the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage full hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented front-end systems with separate computation-oriented back-end systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. The hypermedia engine generates this representation using bridge laws, which capture the internal structure of client systems. Users access the application through its hypermedia representation. We also describe a set of minimal requirements for integrating our hypermedia engine with an information system. We believe these guidelines apply to all integration efforts, not just our own. Information systems will require some supplementary routines for the engine to manage hypermedia functionality for them. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

On integrating hypermedia into decision support and other information systems

The goal of this research is to provide hypermedia functionality to all information systems that interact with people. Hypermedia is a concept involving access to information, embodying the notions of context-sensitive navigation, annotation and tailored presentation. This paper presents the architecture of a system-level hypermedia engine, designed both to manage full hypermedia functionality for an information system and to bind interface-oriented front-end systems with separate computation-oriented back-end systems. The engine dynamically superimposes a hypermedia representation over a back-end application's knowledge components and processes. The hypermedia engine generates this representation using bridge laws, which capture the internal structure of client systems. Users access the application through its hypermedia representation. The paper also describes a set of minimal requirements for integrating the hypermedia engine with an information system. These guidelines apply to all integration efforts, not just that described here. Information systems will require some supplementary routines for the engine to manage hypermedia functionality for them. The more sophisticated and cooperative the information system, the higher the level of hypermedia support the engine will provide.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

Ein Navigationsassistent für das World Wide Web

Die Orientierung der Anwender während der Erarbeitung von Informationen im WWW wird auch von den neuesten Versionen aktueller Web-Browser nur unzureichend unterstützt. Als Lösungsansatz wird in dieser Arbeit eine graphische interaktive Visualisierung der Navigationsstrukturen während der Navigation vorgeschlagen. Nach einer Einführung in die Problematik der graphischen Übersichten im Hypertextbereich wird auf die Notwendigkeit neuer Arten von Dialoghistorien hingewiesen. Am besten geeignet für die Darstellung von Dialoghistorien in Netzwerken, die den Charakter von Hypertextsystemen haben, erweisen sich hierarchische Strukturen. Es wird der auf hierarchischen Strukturen basierende, im Rahmen des DeMeS-Projekt Medienassistenten entwickelte Navigationsassistent für das World Wide Web vorgestellt. (DIPF/Orig.

Designing a training tool for imaging mental models

The training process can be conceptualized as the student acquiring an evolutionary sequence of classification-problem solving mental models. For example a physician learns (1) classification systems for patient symptoms, diagnostic procedures, diseases, and therapeutic interventions and (2) interrelationships among these classifications (e.g., how to use diagnostic procedures to collect data about a patient's symptoms in order to identify the disease so that therapeutic measures can be taken. This project developed functional specifications for a computer-based tool, Mental Link, that allows the evaluative imaging of such mental models. The fundamental design approach underlying this representational medium is traversal of virtual cognition space. Typically intangible cognitive entities and links among them are visible as a three-dimensional web that represents a knowledge structure. The tool has a high degree of flexibility and customizability to allow extension to other types of uses, such a front-end to an intelligent tutoring system, knowledge base, hypermedia system, or semantic network