Communicating Effectively With Interaction    

The ability to build interactions that support, enable, and improve communication is a valuable skill for help developers, Web-site designers, multimedia content developers, information-rich user interface designers-anyone who designs and develops information to be used online. This paper presents the basics of interaction design for information products and describes some basic underlying human factors and user-interface design principles.

Ames, Andrea L. ACM SIGDOC (2001). Presentations>Information Design>User Centered Design>Multimedia

The Contribution of Hypermedia Link Authoring    

Linking, when properly executed, enhances the value of content by providing a consistent perspective and organizational scheme that enriches the user's experience. Link authoring, like content authoring, is a creative process of making connections between disparate yet related information. Effective link authoring requires intellect, creativity, and domain knowledge to define the relationships among concepts that can support a particular pedagogical objective. The contribution of hypermedia link authoring is often poorly understood and unrecognized by traditional academic and publishing communities. Publishers of commercial and academic hypermedia typically neither formally recognize link authoring as something that should be protected by copyright, nor do they extend to those involved in link authoring the same degree of credit or remuneration given conventional content authors or illustrators.

Bergeron, Bryan P. and Michael T. Bailin. Technical Communication Online (1997). Design>Information Design>Hypertext>Multimedia

The Design and Evaluation of Interactivities in a Digital Library

The US National Science Foundation has established a program to create a National Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education Digital Library (NSDL). One of the subsidiary NSDL libraries under development is the National Civil Engineering Educational Resources Library (NCERL). The first phase of NCERL is the creation and collection of digital resources in three areas of civil engineering—geotechnical (soil), rock, and water engineering (GROW). The concept of interactivities guides the design, development, and evaluation efforts of the GROW digital collection. This article describes the salient features of GROW, defines and discusses interactivities as an emerging, integral part of teaching and learning in civil engineering education. Interactivities take place at three distinct levels: the information resource, the collection, and the context. Very simply, the concept of interactivities can be defined as the emphasis on structured representations of interactive multimedia resources. Additionally, resources are designed with rich learning tasks and organized in pedagogical collections supplemented with contextual information. Preliminary evaluation of GROW-NCERL using interactivities is briefly described.

Budhu, Muniram and Anita Coleman. D-Lib Magazine (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Multimedia

Design Issues for Producing Effective Multimedia Presentations    

When designing multimedia presentations, technical communicators must consider navigational aids and the degree of user control, audio cues, color and typographical elements, visual elements, and copyright issues. Understanding these issues will help us develop guidelines for effective use of multimedia.

Mason, Lisa. Technical Communication Online (1997). Design>Information Design>Multimedia

Designing Accessible T-Government Services  

This research shows some potentiality of Digital TV, and chiefly DTT, for promoting e-inclusion activities and granting accessible entertainment and t-government services.

Bertini, Patrizia. Informacios Tarsadalom-es Trendkutato Kozpont honlapja (2005). Books>Information Design>Multimedia>Government

Digital Architectures: SGML, HTML, Multimedia and the Structure of Electronic Documents  

With the use of online multimedia communication growing daily, online technologies have dramatically changed the ways we use and present information -- so much so, that we also need to have new theories and models for understanding how technology and content are related in this new communication environment. This paper presents a theory of digital architecture and explains how SGML, HTML, and Information Architecture are related in the creation of a new online literacy and rhetoric.

Heba, Gary M. STC Proceedings (1996). Design>Multimedia>Information Design

Games, Information Design, and New Technologies for Technical Communicators  

Developments in communication technologies such as video scriptwriting and interactive multimedia require that technical communicators develop the skills and literacies necessary for adapting to the demands of designing information for media other than print. This paper presents a semiotic theory and model of multimedia discourse which will help technical communicators conceptualize and produce texts in new media. The model operates on the premise that communication practices can be considered as language games. The model focuses on the rhetorical and semiotic features of multimedia language games, and how to manipulate them.

Heba, Gary M. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Information Design>Multimedia>Games

North Bay Multimedia Association

NBMA is an open community of new media professionals. Since 1992, it's been a meeting ground to explore the present and future of new media; a place to exchange ideas, learn about new techniques and technologies, be inspired, and find business support in a friendly and productive atmosphere.

North Bay Multimedia Association. Organizations>Information Design>Multimedia>California

SMIL When You Play That: A Gentle Introduction to SMIL + SVG

SMIL is an easy-to-learn, HTML-like language for creating 'TV-like multimedia presentations such as training courses on the Web,' according to the W3C. The current SMIL recommendation is 1.0, and you can read all about it at the W3C address cited immediately above, and at another one we’ll mention later. This is our way of avoiding adding fifty pages to this article.

Zeldman, Jeffrey. List Apart, A (2001). Design>Information Design>Multimedia>SMIL

Structuring Complex Interactive Information

To improve the structure of complex information when it is to be presented electronically, technical communicators may turn to ideas taken from object-oriented programming, to clarify and revive the structure of the material in existing documents before mounting them online. But when an organization starts moving information onto the Web, technical communicators may go through a phase transition, as the system becomes so much more complex it exhibits emergent behaviors, and demands new attitudes, concepts, and work from the technical communicator.

Price, Jonathan R. Communication Circle, The (1997). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia

Towards Multimodal Public Information Systems    

In the future e-Home, information from various sources, located both globally and locally, are at hand for a wide range of tasks. Many of these tasks involve finding out about public authorities' rules and regulations. The Public Tax authorities, for instance, provide hundreds of documents on their web site (forms, FAQ’s, tax rules, etc.). Currently, the user is restricted to navigating and searching these information sources by clicking hyperlinks or typing in keywords in a search box. Suppose a citizen needs to know what the local tax in his area is. By providing the keywords “kommunalskatt” (local tax) and “Linköping” to the search engine five documents are retrieved and the user can continue clicking on the provided links to see if the answer is provided in the documents found. On the other hand, supposing that the user had the ability to state the information problem in natural language.

Merkel, Magnus and Arne Jonsson. Linkopings Universitet (2002). Articles>Information Design>Government>Multimedia

Use Data URIs to Include Media in XML

There are many ways to link to non-XML content within XML, including binary content. Sometimes you need to roll all such external content directly into the XML. Data scheme URIs are one way to specify a full resource within a URI, which you can then use in XML constructs. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji shows how to use this to bundle related media into a single file.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia>XML

Pushing the Boundaries of Traditional Heritage Policy: Maintaining Long-Term Access to Multimedia Content    

This paper will address the direction chosen by the Audiovisual Department of the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF) in order to maintain access to a comprehensive collection of multimedia and electronic documents. It will describe several experimental technical solutions for preservation, emphasizing the consequences of a requirement for future users to be able to use these documents for research purposes. These result in the use of emulation solutions as well as new practices of collection development policy with regard to the specific structure of information within a multimedia context.

Miura, Gregory. IFLA Journal (2007). Design>Web Design>Information Design>Multimedia