Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems: A proposal of reference - PDF document

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2304850 Intelligent Multimedia Presentation Systems: A proposal of reference model Article · October 1999 Source: CiteSeer CITATION READS 1 19 6 authors , including: Monica Bordegoni Thomas Rist Politecnico di Milano University of Applied Sciences Augsburg 320 PUBLICATIONS 1,887 CITATIONS 183 PUBLICATIONS 3,686 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Panos E. Trahanias Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas 212 PUBLICATIONS 3,660 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Designing Multisensory Product Experience Through Virtual Reality Technologies View project Olfaction and olfactory display View project All content following this page was uploaded by Panos E. Trahanias on 17 August 2014. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

INTELLIGENT MUL TIMEDIA PRESENT A TION SYSTEMS� A PR OPOSAL F OR A REFERENCE MODEL M� BORDEGONI G� F A CONTI T� RIST CNR ITIA CNR CNUCE DFKI Milano� Italy Pisa� Italy Saarbr� ucken� Germany S� R UGGIERI P � TRAHANIAS M� WILSON Universit� a di F OR TH�ICS CRLC�RAL Pisa� Italy Her aklion� Cr ete� Gr e e c e Chilton� Didc ot� UK The dev elopmen t of the so called intel ligent multime dia pr esentation systems �IMMPSs� is curren tly v ery activ ely addressed b y researc h groups w orldwide� A common goal of the researc h comm unit y is to dev elop mec hanisms for the au� tomated generation of m ultimedia presen tatio ns� Up to no w� some large�sized protot yp es of IMMPSs ha v e b een built and user in terfaces of some applicatio ns already include automated comp onen ts for certain generation tasks suc h as text or graphics generation � Unfortunately � there is no common agreemen t on a generic ar� c hitecture for IMMPS with clear functional de�nitions of in v olv ed sub comp on en t s� Moreo v er� ev en the terminology used in the descriptions of existing IMMPSs v aries considerably across researc h teams� With the prop osal of a reference mo del for IMMPSs� this pap er tries to �ll a ma jor metho dolog ica l gap and th us ma y pro� vide a sound basis for ongoing and future dev elopmen t s of IMMPSs� In essence� the prop osed reference mo del consists of sev eral la y ers referring to the particu� lar subtasks whic h o ccur in m ultimedia presen tation generation� F ollo wing the paradigm of kno wledge�based computing� w e in tro duce a minim um set of explic� itly enco ded kno wledge� and assign it to some logically distinct kno wledge sources� These sources allo w to share kno wledge among comp onen ts of di�eren t la y ers in a clien t�serv er fashion� In order to demonstra te the use of the reference mo del� w e pro vide a comparison of t w o IMMPS b y redescribing them in terms of the mo del� � In tro ducti on Observing an increasing n um b er of applications where the �man ual� author� ing of presen tations is no longer feasible� the dev elopmen t of mec hanisms for the automated generation of m ultim edia presen tations has b ecome a shared goal across man y disciplines� Since the use of m ultiple media for con v eying information do es not guaran tee e�ectiv e and in telligible presen tations p er se� these mec hanisms need to b e intel ligent in the sense that they are able to dra w appropriate design decisions� Up to no w� a lot of researc h and dev elop� men t w ork has b een conducted addressing asp ects of automating m ultim edia presen tation generation� and ev en some large�size protot yp es of IMMPSs ha v e � � b een dev elop ed �e�g�� MMI � WIP � MIPS� COMET �� Ho w ev er� no generic mo del has emerged so far� Eac h pro ject b egan from scratc h� relying only on �

the past exp erience of the dev elop ers� Th us it is not surprising that there is no agreemen t on the terminology to b e used� on the functional de�nition of an IMMPS� or on a generic arc hitecture whic h re�ects the logical structure of pro cesses for the generation of m ultim edia presen tations� With the prop osal for a reference mo del for IMMPSs� this pap er tries to �ll a ma jor metho dological gap and th us ma y pro vide a sound basis for ongoing and future dev elopmen ts of IMMPSs� The agreemen t on a r efer enc e mo del in the �eld will ha v e sev eral adv an tages� First of all� there is a general motiv ation for ha ving a reference mo del for an y class of related computing systems� Among other things� a reference mo del will help to analyze and compare existing sys� tems of a certain class on the basis of a common generic arc hitecture� and b y means of a common terminology � Moreo v er� the generic arc hitecture b eing the core of a reference mo del will foster the mo dular dev elopmen t of future large� size systems� as eac h mo dule can b e assigned a w ell de�ned role �in terms of the reference mo del�� with w ell de�ned in terfaces b et w een system comp onen ts and to other systems� Our reference mo del is targeted to w ards the class of systems �or comp onen ts of sup erordinate systems� whose task is to presen t information to the user in an e�e ctive w a y � Hereb y � the attribute e�e ctive means� that the particular information needs of the individual users are b est met under a giv en set of presen tation constrain ts� suc h as resource limitatio ns and the user�s kno wledge and st yle preferences� Since in the v ast ma jorit y of non�trivial applications the information needs will v ary from user to user and from situation to situation� a presen tation system should b e able to �exibly generate v arious presen tations for one and the same information con ten t to b e comm unicated� Ha ving iden ti� �ed the class of systems to b e captured b y the mo del� let�s turn our atten tion at the general guidelines that ha v e driv en our design decisions� A de quate mo dularisation� T o facilitate the dev elopmen t and compari� � son of practical large�size systems� the reference mo del m ust comprise a mo dularisation of a generic pro cess for m ultimedia presen tation gener� ation� Idealy � this mo dularization breaks do wn the generation pro cess in to logically distinct and computationally feasible subtasks� Appr opriate de gr e e of abstr action� The reference mo del should� on the � one hand� re�ect the p eculiarities of m ultim edia generation� On the other hand� it should b e general enough to capture the whole class of IMMPSs� Certainly � the generic arc hitecture should abstract from concrete imple� men tations� as it is alw a ys p ossible to rely on di�eren t mec hanisms to accomplish a single generation subtask� and di�eren t formats for repre� sen ting kno wledge are alw a ys a c hoice� �