Cross-Media Document Linking and Navigation

Presentation given at DocEng 2018, 18th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, Halifax, Canada.

ABSTRACT: Documents do often not exist in isolation but are implicitly or explicitly linked to parts of other documents. However, due
to a multitude of proprietary document formats with rather simple link models, today’s possibilities for creating hyperlinks between snippets of information in different document formats are limited. In previous work, we have presented a dynamically extensible cross-document link service overcoming the limitations of the simple link models supported by most existing document formats. Based on a plug-in mechanism,
our link service enables the linking across different document types. In this paper, we assess the extensibility of our link service by integrating some document formats as well as third-party document viewers. We illustrate the flexibility of creating advanced hyperlinks across these document formats and viewers that cannot be realised with existing linking solutions or link models of existing document formats. A user study further investigates the user experience when creating and navigating cross-document hyperlinks.

Research paper: https://beatsigner.com/publications/cross-media-document-linking-and-navigation.pdf

Transcript

1. 2 December 2005
   Cross-Media Document Linking and Navigation
   Ahmed A.O. Tayeh, Payam Ebrahimi and Beat Signer
   Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab
   Department of Computer Science
   Vrije Universiteit Brussel
   WEB & INFORMATION
   SYSTEMS ENGINEERING
   

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2. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 2
   August 30, 2018
   Working With Documents
   ▪ 26% of reading and writing tasks include cross-document
   referencing
   ▪ Use of annotations and folders to create references
   ▪ 56% of knowledge workers not satisfied with existing mechanisms
   ▪ 75% of knowledge workers indicated the need for a tool
   to associate information
   

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3. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 3
   August 30, 2018
   Missing Cross-Document Linking
   ×
   ×
   ×
   Word document PDF document
   

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4. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 4
   August 30, 2018
   Existing Support for Hyperlinks
   

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5. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 5
   August 30, 2018
   Existing Hypermedia Systems
   ▪ Limited extensibility
   ▪ on the data as well as
   on the visual level
   ▪ Limited support of
   third-party viewers
   MADCOW: A Multimedia Digital Annotation
   System, Paolo Bottoni et al., In Proceedings of
   AVI 2004
   

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6. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 6
   August 30, 2018
   DocFormat 1 DocFormat 2
   C R U D
   Menu
   Gateways
   Link Model
   DocFormat 1
   Gateways Data Plug-ins Visual Plug-ins Add-ins
   DocFormat 2 DocFormat 3
   Database
   Add-in
   Gateway
   DocFormat 3
   Third-party
   document
   viewer
   DocFormat 3
   Data plug-ins
   Visual plug-in Visual plug-in
   Developer
   End user
   Link browser
   write and upload
   plug-ins and add-ins
   search and download
   plug-ins and add-ins
   visualise documents, create,
   navigate and edit hyperlinks
   Link service
   Communication
   Channels
   Plug-in tracking
   Gateway ...
   Gateway plug-ins
   RESTful API
   search and
   retrieve plug-ins
   Online Plug-in Repository
   

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7. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 7
   August 30, 2018
   Visual Plug-ins
   

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8. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 8
   August 30, 2018
   Extensibility Usability Evaluation
   1. Integration of a number of document formats
   ▪ link browser
   - PDF, XML, plain text and images
   ▪ third-party document viewers
   - Google Chrome, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
   2. How easy can other document formats be integrated?
   3. End-user usability study
   

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9. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 9
   August 30, 2018
   Plain Text and PDF
   

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10. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 10
    August 30, 2018
    HTML
    

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11. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 11
    August 30, 2018
    YouTube
    

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12. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 12
    August 30, 2018
    Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
    

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13. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 13
    August 30, 2018
    Images
    

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14. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 14
    August 30, 2018
    XML
    

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15. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 15
    August 30, 2018
    How Easy Can Other Formats be Integrated?
    ▪ Visualisation in link browser
    ▪ available Java library
    ▪ definition of selectors
    ▪ visualisation of selectors
    ▪ Visualisation in third-party viewer
    ▪ extensible viewer
    ▪ definition of selectors
    ▪ visualisation of selectors
    ▪ support of communication channel
    

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16. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 16
    August 30, 2018
    Visualisation in Link Browser
    

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17. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 17
    August 30, 2018
    Visualisation in Third-Party Viewer
    

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18. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 18
    August 30, 2018
    End-User Evaluation
    ▪ Mixed method approach
    ▪ 14 participants (7 males) aged between 23 and 37 (M=27)
    ▪ non-computer scientists (from VUB)
    ▪ Quantitative evaluation
    ▪ CSUQ questionnaire with 19 questions evaluating four different
    usability aspects
    - ease of use (SYSUSE)
    - information quality (INFOQUAL)
    - interface quality (INTERQUAL)
    - overall satisfaction (OVERALL)
    ▪ Qualitative evaluation via semi-structured interviews
    

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19. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 19
    August 30, 2018
    Setup
    ▪ Only two document formats (plain text and Word)
    ▪ Brief explanation of study objectives
    ▪ Explanation of supported functionality
    ▪ Participants had to perform a number of tasks
    ▪ creating, navigating, deleting and editing of bi- and
    multidirectional hyperlinks
    ▪ extend the link service to support PDF and HTML
    ▪ creating and navigating multidirectional hyperlinks between the
    four document formats
    ▪ Questionnaire followed by a semi-structured interview
    

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20. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 20
    August 30, 2018
    Quantitative Results
    

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21. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 21
    August 30, 2018
    Aspects to be Improved
    ▪ Participants confused about hyperlink sources and targets
    ▪ Avoid technical concepts
    ▪ Avoid confusion in third-party viewer
    ▪ Provide explanations (manuals) via videos
    

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22. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 22
    August 30, 2018
    Conclusions
    ▪ Contributions
    ▪ technical evaluation with a number of document formats
    - PDF, plain text, XML, images
    - Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Google Chrome, YouTube
    ▪ technical evaluation of extensibility with other document formats
    ▪ initial end-user evaluation
    ▪ Future Work
    ▪ integration of additional document formats
    ▪ user study with third-party developers
    ▪ manageability and maintainability of hyperlinks
    

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23. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 23
    August 30, 2018
    References
    ▪ A.A.O. Tayeh, P. Ebrahimi and B. Signer,
    Cross-Media Document Linking and Navigation,
    Proceedings of the 18th ACM Symposium on Document
    Engineering (DocEng 2018), Halifax, Canada,
    August 2018
    ▪ http://beatsigner.com/publications/tayeh_DocEng2018.pdf
    

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