Robots as Characters
• Mannequin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8kcTFLNz0w
• Summit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAN7vAp2FfU
Generalizing New Media:
Frameworks for Discussion and
Comparison
Exploring the Design Space for
Interactive Scholarly Communication
• Motivation for a community developed framework
for interactive scholarly communication
• Seven dimensions of interactive communication
• Previous work in the context of the seven dimensions
• Open research questions
• Conclusions/Goals
Brief timeline for improved scholarly
communication
• 1940’s Vannevar Bush
• 1960’s & 1970’s Nelson, Engelbart, Licklider,
van Dam
• 1980’s Hypertext research field coalesces
• 1990’s Digital libraries and interactive digital
storytelling research fields coalesce
Current practices of scholarly
communication
• Focus on text and continuance of existing
methods of writing the scientific record
• Restructuring old media via point-to-point
conversions from the static physical world to a
part of the digital world that is also static
• The way we make the record is essentially
unchanged from Vannevar Bush’s time
A new approach to scholarly
communication
• A wide-open exploration of the design space created
by new media for writing the scientific record
• Focus on interactive authoring tools and systems that
will help scholars record the record of their ideas and
scientific contributions
• Authoring tools for the digital libraries of tomorrow
Why new forms of scholarly
communication are needed
• Infrastructure is available:
– Internet for dissemination
– Digital Libraries for archival storage
• Interactive faction is not keeping up with results from
interactive fiction
• Scholarly communication is already broken
• Existing forms may not be the most efficient
• New media may be more immersive and engaging
Research agenda
• Design new systems for making and consulting the
scientific record
• Evaluate and disseminate the results of interactive
media studies on scholarly communication
• Generate and distribute new interactive media,
authoring tools, and storytelling engines
• Improve the general framework for interactive
scholarly communication
Initial framework
• Interactive media tend to change the
relationship between the reader and the
author
• A simple model will suffice to discuss the
design space of interactive scholarly
communication
active digital libary
automatic change
author’s
interface
computation
converting to
stored form
stored
artifacts
computation
converting to
presented form
reader’s
interface
implicit or explicit
requests
• Consider the ACM DL
• Consider a personalized news reader
• Consider a MMORPG
Dimensions of Interest
• Roles – are there separate author/reader
(creator/consumer) roles or are they merged?
• Voices – how many voices are normal in the
medium?
• Interaction – do users get to interact with the
content?
• Indirection – does the reader see what the
author created?
Dimensions of Interest (cont.)
• History – does the medium preserve the
authoring process or interaction?
• Narrative – do normal examples bind the
contents into a single (or multiple) narrative?
• Media – does the medium build on top of a
variety of component media?
Seven dimensions of interactive
communication
• Roles
• Voices
• Interaction


Indirection
History


Narrative
Media
active digital libary
automatic change
author’s
interface
computation
converting to
stored form
stored
artifacts
computation
converting to
presented form
reader’s
interface
implicit or explicit
requests
Prior systems
•
•
•
•
Spatial hypertext (VKB)
Digital Scholarship and Publishing (Synchrony)
Metadocuments (Walden’s Paths)
For each system:
– Brief review
– Locate in design space provided by the seven
dimensions
VKB Spaces as media for interactive
scholarly communication
• Publishing unit is an evolutionary space
• Authors construct the space over time through direct
manipulation of visual representations
• Readers explore the space to understand its story
• Existing media types: text, images, music files,
internal and external links
• Constructed media types: classes, lists, collections
VKB Spaces in the design space
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Multiple roles
Multiple voices
Moderate level of interaction
Low level of indirection
High level of support for history
VKB spaces are most often non-narrative
Low to moderate level of media use
Synchrony PADLs as media for interactive
scholarly communication
• Publishing units: structured presentations of
streaming video segments and text (transcripts,
original writing, annotations)
• Authoring through direct manipulation
• Readers watch streaming video and read text
• Existing media types: streaming video, text
• Constructed media types: presentations
Synchrony PADLs in the design space
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Multiple roles
One voice
Low level of interaction
Low level of indirection
No history
Highly narrative
Moderate level of media use
Walden’s Paths as media for interactive
scholarly communication
• Publishing unit: annotated paths
• Authoring via a path authoring tool
• Readers browse paths linearly, jump between
pages of a path, or navigate off the path
• Existing and constructed media are those
offered by the web
Walden’s Paths in the design space
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Separate author and user roles
Multiple voices due to component pages
Medium level of interaction
Medium level of indirection
No history
Medium level of narrative
Moderate level of media use
Roles
Voices
Interaction
traditional
1
low
merged
many
VKB
high
PADL
Indirection
low
high
History
low
high
Narrative
low
high
Media
low
high
WP
ACM DL
Characteristics of communication
supported by ends of spectrum
Roles
Authority
Discussion
Voices
Consistent presentation
Many perspectives
Interaction
Immersion
Engagement
Indirection
Author control
Applicability to diverse
situations
History
Privacy
Understanding authoring
process
Narrative
Facts, maps, emergent
relations
Comprehension of complex
reasoning
Media
Easy distribution
Multiple comprehension
strategies
Questions
• What other dimensions are important?