Interactive Media Roy Rada Interactive Media Contributions by Antonios Michailidis Includes 97 Figures Springer-Verlag New York Berlin Heidelberg London Paris Tokyo Hong Kong Barcelona Budapest Roy Rada Department of Computer Science University of Liverpool Liverpool L69 3BX England Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rada, R. (Roy), 1951- Interactive media I Roy Rada. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-I3: 978-0-387-94485-2 e-ISBN-I3: 978-1-4612-4226-0 DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4612-4226-0 1. Interactive media. I. Title. QA76.76.I57R33 1995 004' .01 ' 9--dc20 95-3759 Printed on acid-free paper. © 1995 by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part with out the written permission of the publisher (Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone. Production managed by Jim Harbison; manufacturing supervised by Jeff Taub. Camera-ready copy provided by the author. 987654321 Preface This book was written for students and practitioners of engineering and social sciences, including computer, information, communication, library, business, management, and cognitive science. The topic is the relationship between people and interactive media. The book describes individuals, groups, and organizations. An understanding of people is critical to an understanding of the technology which can help people. This book was written with the help of a special computer system for authoring called the Many Using and Creating Hypertext (MUCH) system. Students and researchers from the University of Liverpool contributed to the book through the MUCH system. Classes at the University of Liverpool, both undergraduate classes and master's degree classes, have used various drafts of this book as required reading. The book has been available to the students online via the MUCH system, and the students have provided helpful feedback for the contents of the book. The author is particularly grateful for the contributions of Antonios Michailidis and Alex Birchall. Antonios's influence is most prominent in the chapters on groups, and Alex's, in the latter chapters on organizations. Claude Ghaoui coordinated the book authoring and production team, and Anthony Deakin provided finishing touches. Renata Malinowski put many, many hours into implementing suggested revisions and correcting the format, graphics, and references. Springer-Verlag via Martin Gilchrist and Rudiger Gebauer have been helpful in molding the structure and content of the book. The success of the MUCH team and Springer-Verlag with this book must be judged by the reader. Please enjoy! Contents Preface v 1 Introduction 1 1.l Hypermedia, Groupware, and Networks 1 1.2 Individual, Group, and Organization 2 1.3 Communication, Information, and Media 4 1.4 People and Technology 7 1.5 Structure of this Book 9 Part I: The Individual and Hypermedia 11 2 Human-Computer Interaction 12 2.1 Human, Computer, and Environment 12 2.2 Accessing Information 14 2.3 Creating Information 15 2.4 Usability 19 2.5 Conclusion 19 3 Hypertext 21 3.1 Architecture 22 3.2 Interfaces 25 3.3 Authoring Systems 30 3.4 The MUCH System 32 3.5 Education 35 3.6 Software Engineering 41 3.7 Conclusion 46 4 Multimedia 48 4.1 Views 48 4.2 Time 50 4.3 Compression 53 4.4 Video 54 4.5 Sound 61 4.6 Compact Disks 63 4.7 Multimedia Personal Computers 67 4.8 Conclusion 69 viii Contents 5 Hypermedia 71 5.1 Links and Timing 71 5.2 Hypermedia Model 73 5.3 An Authoring System 73 5.4 Linking in Video 74 5.5 Formats, Converters, and Container 77 5.6 Conclusion 82 Part II: The Group and Groupware 84 6 Group and Groupware Principles 85 6.1 Definitions of Group and Groupware 85 6.2 Coordination and Communication in Groups 86 6.3 Roles and Processes in Groups 92 6.4 Groupware Principles 95 6.5 The New Media and Groups 105 6.6 Conclusion 109 7 Groupware Applications 111 7.1 Collaboration in Education 111 7.2 Authoring and Publishing 115 7.3 Software Inspection 118 7.4 MUCH System 121 7.5 Real-time Interaction Technology 125 7.6 Conclusion 129 Part III: The Organization and Networks 133 8 The Organization 134 8.1 Organizational Environments 135 8.2 Organizational Structure 136 8.3 Communication 139 8.4 Models 143 8.5 Innovation in Organizations 148 8.6 Conclusion 152 9 Networks and their Applications 155 9.1 Networks 155 9.2 Multimedia on the Network 163 9.3 Electronic Mail 165 9.4 Electronic Libraries 168 9.5 The Internet and its Access Tools 171 9.6 Conclusion 180 Contents ix 10 Organizational Case Studies 183 10.1 Developing Organizational Applications 183 10.2 University Teaching 188 10.3 University Research 192 10.4 Telemedicine 196 10.5 Conclusion 203 11 Conclusion 204 11.1 New Technologies 204 11.2 Measure of Success 206 11.3 Organizational Learning 207 12 Exercises 210 12.1 Essay Topics 210 12.2 Organizational Exercise 212 13 Selected Abbreviations 215 References 218 Index 232 1 Introduction People need information about their environment in order to know how to react to it and to identify in their reaction what they can share with others. People want technology to support this knowing and sharing via storing, processing, and producing information (see Figure 1.1). The new information technologies offer exciting opportunities for individuals, groups, and organizations to store, process, and produce information. THE INFORMATION LIFE-CYCLE STORAGE PRINl1NG COPVlNG RECORDING FILING MEMORIZING VIEWING LISTENING Figure 1.1: Information Life-cycle. The information life-cycle con sists of the production, storage, and processing of information. Peo ple produce information by picturing, speaking, or writing. The in formation may be stored by printing, copying, recording, filing, or memorizing it. People process information by viewing it, listening to it, reading it, or otherwise utilizing it. 1.1 Hypermedia, Groupware, and Networks Media come in multiple forms. Until recently, computers were only able to efficiently handle alphanumeric characters. Developments in information technology have now made other media, particularly images and sound, amenable to computer-based storage, manipulation, and transmission. The synchronization of media gives multimedia. Hypermedia is multimedia with links among the components and a mechanism for moving along the links. Hypermedia has a very important part to play in communication in that it serves to make sense of otherwise discrete components 2 Interactive Media and conveys an overall conceptual structure. The technology, which may be called groupware, has developed in the last few years to enhance group working. It is designed to harness computers and networks to give groups of workers the kind of productivity gains individual users already enjoy from single-user systems, like word-processors and spreadsheets. While groupware in some sense includes traditional database or operating systems, the groupware technology that is now emerging seeks to support information-rich, person-to-person communication. This communication may be synchronized in time or not, and it may occur across great or small physical distances. Organizations consist of groups which work together. Coordination is necessary for organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Without communication people could not coordinate their efforts. Computer networks are vital to communication across time and space for many organizations. 1.2 Individual, Group, and Organization This book considers the theory and practice of hypermedia, groupware, and networks at three levels: the individual, the group, and the organization. The justification for this approach is that each level manifests different problems that have to be considered in the design and implementation of relevant tools. These problems center on how information is used or, more precisely, how it is accessed, created, communicated, and reused once again. When an individual becomes aware that he or she does not know something that it would be useful to know, that individual has defined a need for information. Given this need, the first step is establishing whether such information exists. If it does exist, the next step is retrieving it. Once it has been retrieved, the individual must be able to understand it. However, this apparently straightforward process can in fact be extremely tortuous and longwinded. Many barriers exist between individuals and relevant information, that can mean that the time, effort, and financial cost involved in retrieving it, effectively discourage all but the most determined. Such barriers include information invisibility, misinformation, and jargon to name but a few. The problems of the individual with regard to information do not cease to exist when the individual is a member of a group, though some may be considerably alleviated. Thus the individual may find that other members of the group possess valuable information it would have been costly to retrieve through official channels; or other members of the group may be able to interpret information the individual finds difficult to understand. However, groups have problems in using information that do not exist for individuals as such. These problems center around the issue of information sharing. Solutions to these problems are various, and involve group Introduction 3 protocols and structures. These protocols and structures determine the way information is disseminated within and beyond the group. At the organizational level, the issue is again that of information sharing, but now it is that much more complex as it involves the sharing of information between groups, as well as between groups and individuals, and between individuals who are not members of the same groups. Individuals may be members of more than one group, the information requirements of which may conflict. Also, in the organization the distinction between formal and informal groups becomes important: successful organizational functioning can depend equally on both types. The technology appropriate for individuals may be different from the technology for groups or organizations [71] (see Figure 1.2). Hypermedia tools, such as video editors and electronic document browsers, have been designed to satisfy individuals' needs and goals. Groupware systems, such as co-authoring systems and electronic meeting systems, support groups. Networks serve the goals and tasks of entire organizations. Figure 1.2: Individuals, Groups, and Organizations - Research and Technology. Management Information Science (MIS) is a discipline well established since the mid 1960's for the study of organizational uses of information technology. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a discipline well recognized since the mid 1970's for relat ing individuals to applications, particularly hypermedia applications. The discipline of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) focuses on groups and has been popular since the mid 1980's (adapted from [72]).