28.06.2013 Views

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

Papers in PDF format

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

accomplish differentiations of the shared contextual network and are realized as l<strong>in</strong>ked objects. When a<br />

participant connects a new object to the contextual network it does not only differentiate the local relation at<br />

the connection site but calls <strong>in</strong>to activity all components that can be activated by it. The activity of a<br />

component is the charge it receives through its relations to the contextual ambiance and that which it<br />

discharges <strong>in</strong>to the context. Participants <strong>in</strong> a networked collaboration determ<strong>in</strong>e the relation between<br />

components as well as the structure of their relations and thereby establish and differentiate the context and its<br />

constituents <strong>in</strong> a collaboration. No clear dist<strong>in</strong>ctions can be made between <strong>in</strong>teractions concern<strong>in</strong>g the various<br />

levels of a collaboration. This suggests to utilize a common paradigm to represent <strong>in</strong>teractions of different<br />

types.<br />

The DisNet Model<br />

Interactions are represented as objects which have several properties, or "slots". The slots of an object may<br />

conta<strong>in</strong> as their entry the object's title, some content (e.g. a statement, a picture,...), its purpose and relation to<br />

the local and global context, sources, keywords, some behavior of this object, etc. The slot-list of an object is<br />

fully user-def<strong>in</strong>able. The slot of an object may itself be an object consist<strong>in</strong>g of slots.<br />

An object is always connected to at least one other (reference-) object by means of a typed l<strong>in</strong>k [Conkl<strong>in</strong>, 88],<br />

that names the relation between them. While objects are implicitly l<strong>in</strong>ked to other objects by the relation of<br />

entries <strong>in</strong> correspond<strong>in</strong>g slots, typed l<strong>in</strong>ks explicitly specify the k<strong>in</strong>ds of entry/entry- and entry/contextrelations<br />

(Methods like search, filter<strong>in</strong>g, retrieval, redundancy prevention, complexity reduction, etc. rely on<br />

the more or less explicit representation of the relations on which they should be applied). The connectedness of<br />

an object is one of its properties; <strong>in</strong> effect every object stores part of the contextual network.<br />

The "configuration-object" which is part of a project's home-object has the same datastructure; it determ<strong>in</strong>es<br />

the repertory of object-properties (slot-list), the appearance and behavior of objects <strong>in</strong> the doma<strong>in</strong>s of<br />

<strong>in</strong>teraction (script<strong>in</strong>g). An object connected to a reference object <strong>in</strong>herits its configuration; the configuration<br />

can be modified by overrid<strong>in</strong>g the sett<strong>in</strong>gs.<br />

"Conta<strong>in</strong>er"-objects are used to aggregate components of a network and thereby structure the net<br />

hierarchically and aid <strong>in</strong> complexity-reduction. Different types of conta<strong>in</strong>ers (clusters, paths and collections)<br />

def<strong>in</strong>e the relation of the conta<strong>in</strong>ed objects. A conta<strong>in</strong>er allows to expand and to collapse its content and<br />

substitute it by a placeholder. A special type of conta<strong>in</strong>er, the "local context", specifies all objects of immediate<br />

contextual relevancy for a given object.<br />

The graphical user <strong>in</strong>terface supplies two ma<strong>in</strong> (and several auxiliary) doma<strong>in</strong>s of <strong>in</strong>teraction: a globalDoma<strong>in</strong>,<br />

that can be navigated and allows to access the contextual network on its structural level; and a localDoma<strong>in</strong><br />

where the context is accessed on the object-level by means of multi-field slot-editor, called "Jector". The<br />

localDoma<strong>in</strong> is a plane <strong>in</strong> front of the globalDoma<strong>in</strong>. Another doma<strong>in</strong> allows to arrange field-entries on a twodimensional<br />

work<strong>in</strong>g-pane and to f<strong>in</strong>alize documents and pr<strong>in</strong>touts. The doma<strong>in</strong>s are coupled <strong>in</strong> that<br />

<strong>in</strong>teractions <strong>in</strong> one doma<strong>in</strong> yield correspond<strong>in</strong>g differentiation <strong>in</strong> the other doma<strong>in</strong>s.<br />

The globalDoma<strong>in</strong> displays a context as a two- or three-dimensional, semantically l<strong>in</strong>ked graph of iconized<br />

objects and allows for brows<strong>in</strong>g and modify<strong>in</strong>g its structure via user-centered navigation; that is, a participant<br />

navigates <strong>in</strong> the context-space and is provided a range of possibilities to arrange and design its appearance. In<br />

the localDoma<strong>in</strong> an object is represented by the Jector, an obJECT-browser and -editOR, consist<strong>in</strong>g of contextsensitive<br />

popup-menus to select slots and of fields to display the correspond<strong>in</strong>g entries. Fields may display<br />

heterogeneous multimedia data <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g text, images, audio/video, etc.(media-<strong>in</strong>tegration). The Jector can be<br />

collapsed to an iconized label resid<strong>in</strong>g on the localDoma<strong>in</strong> workbench, or expanded to show several slotentries<br />

at a time and compare them with slot-entries of other objects.<br />

The Jector not only enables the user to view and edit object-slots and to create new and browse exist<strong>in</strong>g objects,<br />

but also to modify the object-configuration, and the appearance and functionality of the Jector itself.<br />

Interaction-based Network<strong>in</strong>g<br />

The approach suspends the participant (<strong>in</strong> a mail<strong>in</strong>glist, owner of a web-page) as the outstand<strong>in</strong>g po<strong>in</strong>t of<br />

reference and makes the conf<strong>in</strong>ed contextual <strong>in</strong>teraction the constitutive unit of a discourse, or collaboration:

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!