What's Eliza doing in the Chinese room? Incoherent hyperdocuments---and how to avoid them

Abstract

Research on understandinglinear texts has shown that comprehension and navigation mainly depend on the reader's ability to construct a coherent mental representation. While the author of a traditional document can use a variety of structural cues to support his readers in building up such a representation, the author of a hyperdocument faces a new problem. If he wants to ensure that his readers understand the entire hyperdocument as a coherent entity, he needs means to indicate its structure in a comprehensible way. In this paper, we propose a construction kit which provides dedicated design objects for this purpose. The design objects can be characterized as building blocks for three functionally different components of a hyperdocument: its content part, organizational part, and presentation part. In addition to the design objects, we propose some design rules which should guide the construction of coherent hy~rdocuments. KEYWORDSDesign of hyperdocuments, coherent hyperdocuments, rhetorics of hypertext, hyperdocument construction kit, Iabelled links, composite nodes, navigation, comprehension of hyperdocuments.

Development of multiple media documents

“…An alternative approach takes as its starting point the ideas of local and global coherence from discourse analysis combined with a tripartite structure from classical rhetoric (Thüring et al, 1991). The three parts are 'content', 'structure' and 'organisation' corresponding to 'invention', 'disposition' and 'presentation' (apparently a kind of amalgamation of 'style' and 'delivery').…”

How organisation of architecture documentation affects architectural knowledge retrieval

“…Several researchers [25,24,26] report that users of hypertext documents feel 'lost' and have difficulty gaining an overview of the material being read and how this material is interrelated [27]. Likewise, users of wiki-systems may also experience a lack of structure when navigating and finding relevant information [28].…”

Increasing link marker effectiveness for WWW and other hypermedia interfaces: An examination of end-user preferences

“…Successful navigation is characterized by minimal or no disorientation, the user finding and understanding the information they desire, and the task being completed within an acceptable amount of time (Thuring, Haake, & Hannemann, 1991). The path the user follows through a hypermedia information system is a product of these factors as well as the user's interests/goals, individual characteristics, and interactions with the hypermedia system.…”