Nominations for the 1st Nelson Newcomer Award:

ABSTRACT

Hypermedia applications offer users the impression that there are many meaningful ways to navigate through a large body of information nodes. This rich link structure not only creates orientation problems, it may also be a source of comprehension problems when users follow paths through the information which the author did not foresee. Adaptive techniques have been used by a number of researchers in an attempt to offer guidance through and orientation support for rich link structures. The majority of these adaptive hypermedia systems (AHS) have been used in educational applications. The terminology used in this paper also has an educational "flavor". However, there are some adaptive on-line information systems (or "kiosk" systems), adaptive information retrieval systems, and other adaptive hypermedia applications.

In this paper we describe a reference model for adaptive hypermedia applications, called AHAM, which encompasses most features supported by adaptive systems that exist today or that are being developed (and have been published about). Our description of AHS is based on the Dexter model, a widely used reference model for hypermedia. The description is kept somewhat informal in order to be able to explain AHAM rather than formally specify it. AHAM augments Dexter with features for doing adaptation based on a user model which persists beyond the duration of a session. Key aspects in AHAM are:

• The adaptation is based on a domain model, a user model and a teaching model which consists of pedagogical rules. We give a formal definition of each of these (sub)models (but only describe the pedagogical rules informally through examples).
• We distinguish the notions of concept, page and fragment. In some AHS these notions are confused.
• We provide a formalism which lets authors write pedagogical rules (about concepts) in such a way that they can be applied automatically.

We illustrate various aspects of AHAM by means of some features of some well-known AHS. 

KEYWORDS: adaptive hypermedia, user modeling, hypermedia reference model.

Beyond Location: Hypertext Workspaces and Non-Linear Views

Frank M. Shipman, III, Texas A&M University, USA
Catherine C. Marshall, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, USA
Mark LeMere, Guidant Corporation, USA

ABSTRACT

With the growth of the Web as a public information resource, users need workspaces to support the collection, evaluation, organization, and annotation of the materials they retrieve. These analytic workspaces should be designed for both the casual and professional analyst, keeping in mind that different environments may be appropriate for each type of use. In this paper, we derive a set of requirements from observations and reports on the use of information workspaces, coupled with observations of people performing analytical tasks. These workspace requirements include: (1) support for performing multiple simultaneous tasks; (2) a variety of activity-based connections to information resources; (3) tailorable and manipulable reduced document representations; and (4) visualizations to help users manage screen space. We explore the trade-offs implied by these requirements using our implementation of multiple focus fisheye views as we have integrated them into the VIKI workspace.

KEYWORDS: information workspaces, analysis, interpretation, VIKI, fisheye views, reduced document representations, visualization, visual languages.

Control Choices and Network Effects in Hypertext Systems

ABSTRACT

When the utility of a hypertext system depends on the number of users and amount of data in the system, the system exhibits network effects.  This paper examines how the core differences in control assumptions between monolithic hypertext systems, open hypermedia systems, and the Web, lead to different incentive structures for readers and content providers and hence varying levels of network effects. Significant results of this analysis are as follows. First, lack of control over the data in a hypermedia system, combined with a large-scale distribution infrastructure is a key aspect of achieving network effects, since this control choice affords large numbers of readers. Second, examination of network effects from the Web and monolithic hypermedia systems suggests that control over the user interface is a key contributor to network effects, since it provides a more pleasant experience for readers, and allows for more control over the presentation by content providers. Finally, control over the hypermedia structure provides a negative contribution to network effects, since the control point limits scalability, thus capping the total number of readers.

KEYWORDS: network effects, architectural control choices, monolithic hypertext, open hypertext, WWW

Audiovisual-based Hypermedia Authoring: using structured representations for efficient access to AV documents

ABSTRACT

In this article we introduce the notion of audiovisual-based hypermedia authoring systems, i.e. systems mainly using documents from digital audiovisual (AV) archives as a source for hypermedia authoring. After showing that traditional hypermedia models are ill-designed for specific constraints implied by such systems, we propose a change of approach. We present a model based on formal structured representations of the content of documents as it is done in the field of structured documents. Since a specific model for the representation of AV content is needed, we introduce Audiovisual Event Description Interface (AEDI), which provides a model for the description of AV documents, and an XML-based syntax for the exchange of such descriptions. We describe AEDI's main concepts, how it can be related to a formal specification of the domain knowledge - called ontology - which allows efficient dynamic hyperlinking among elements. Finally, we describe the implementation of this model for the production of AV based hypermedia at INA's production department.

KEYWORDS: audiovisual, structured documents, hypermedia design, ontology, content indexing.

Piecing together and tearing apart: finding the story in afternoon

Jill Walker
University of Bergen
5027 Bergen, Norway.
+47 55290049
E-mail: jill.walker@lili.uib.no
 

ABSTRACT

This paper is a reading of a classic of hypertext narrative: Michael Joyce's afternoon, a story. Several writers have discussed afternoon previously [1, 3, 4, 9]. However I have chosen to explore afternoon from a different angle by using theories of narratology, especially Genette. In this reading, I explore ways in which the text confuses the reader but also the many stabilising elements that aid the reader to piece together a story.

KEYWORDS: Criticism, theory, rhetoric, hypertext structure, hypertext fiction, hyperreading.

Electronic Tools for Dismantling the Master's House: Poststructuralist Feminist Research and Hypertext Poetics

Wendy Morgan
Queensland University of Technology
Australia

ABSTRACT

In recent years poststructuralist feminist researchers in the social sciences have questioned the norms of mainstream research epistemology, methodologies and writing. They have therefore sought alternative forms of text work to enact their concerns about the politics of researching and reporting on, for and with others. (A most radical example of this is Lather and Smithies, Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS.) Yet despite such congruneces between feminism and poststructuralism and between hypertext theory and poststructuralism, there have been no examples to date, in theory or practice, of convergence between post-feminist research in the social sciences and a poststructuralist hypertextuality. This paper describes such a hypertextual experiment, a reinscription of Troubling the Angels with additional materials. The point of this experiment is to inquire into the conditions of such writing and reading, and therefore to set an agenda for a future poetics of a poststructuralist feminist research hypertextuality. The paper explores such issues as associative linking, intertextual and intratextual juxtapositions, the unfixing of textual hierarchies in a "rhizomatic" text, non-sequential polylogic, multigeneric collage, and the role of the reader as textual agent.