The Architecture of Information. Interpretation and presentation of information in dynamic environments.

Abstract

Design of information presentation is undergoing significant changes.Documents are information interfaces that must dynamically recon-figure themselves based on their content, the medium in which they are displayed, and the intended use of the information they present.Increases in computational power and the increased bandwidth of interconnected networks provide greater access to information. These factors, combined with the realization that not all of this information can now be pre-designed, necessitate new tools and techniques to ensure the effective presentation of computer-based information.This dissertation exploits the structure of information to support the design of dynamic documents. From this structure, visual languages are created which support the process of building an Architecture of Information. Relational Grammars, an extension to traditional string languages, is the formalism in which these visual languages are constructed. This formal approach affords a number of different interaction techniques, three of which are examined in this research. First,information is automatically presented from predefined languages.This dynamic layout reconfigures the same information accounting for the constraints of different delivery environments. Second, the authoring of information is supported by incremental improvements during the design process. These improvements help the user explore the design space with incremental design decisions. Third, these visual languages are constructed by demonstration. An authoring tool to modify these languages without coding is presented.