Jay David Bolter

Writing space: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing

Part 1 The Visual Writing Space: The Computer as a New Writing Space Writing as Technology The Elements of Writing Seeing and Writing. Part 2 The Conceptual Writing Space: The Electronic Book The New Dialogue Interactive Fiction Critical Theory and the New Writing Space. Part 3 The Mind as a Writing Space: Artificial Intelligence Electronic Signs Writing the Mind Writing Culture Conclusion.

EatWell: sharing nutrition-related memories in a low-income community

Low-income African American communities face a disproportionate amount of diet-related health problems in the United States. To address this issue, we developed EatWell, a system that allows people to use their cell phones to create voice memories describing how they have tried to eat healthfully in their neighborhoods (e.g., at local restaurants) and listen to the memories that others have created. In this paper, we describe the results of our field trial of EatWell, specifically characterizing how our participants were able to craft stories that were both emotive and culturally-relevant, the challenges that arose in creating these memories and finally how sharing these stories facilitated a sense of community empowerment. We conclude by presenting implications for the design of future applications that facilitate the sharing of health-related experiences.

Wizard of Oz support throughout an iterative design process

The Wizard of Oz prototyping approach, widely used in human-computer interaction research, is particularly useful in exploring user interfaces for pervasive, ubiquitous, or mixed-reality systems that combine complex sensing and intelligent control logic. The vast design space for such nontraditional interfaces provides many possibilities for user interaction through one or more modalities and often requires challenging hardware and software implementations. The WOz method helps designers avoid getting locked into a particular design or working under an incorrect set of assumptions about user preferences, because it lets them explore and evaluate designs before investing the considerable development time needed to build a complete prototype.

Architectures for volatile hypertext

Volatile hypertext raise a fundamental theoretical issue what is the value and proper role of the link? Astonishingly, no consensus has emerged on this central hypertext question, even within the hypertext research community. Where Bolter molter 9 la] views rich webs of links as a liberating force that reshapes the constraints of artificial, linear-hierarchical authority, Glushko sees fruitful sources of confusion, writing that “limiting the links in the first place seems a more practical solution.” [Glushko 89]. Indeed, DeYoung considers linking to be harmful [DeYoung 90]. In working with volatile hypertext, we deliberately choose an extreme case in which dedicated readers and writers are necessarily faced with rich, complex, and irregular hypertext webs. Can this task be rendered manageable?

Hypertext and creative writing

Among its many uses, hypertext can serve as a medium for a new kind of flexible, interactive fiction. Storyspace#8482; is a hypertext system we have created for authoring and reading such fiction. Interactive fiction in the computer medium is a continuation of the modern “tradition” of experimental literature in print. However, the computer frees both author and reader from restrictions imposed by the printed medium and therefore allows new experiments in literary structure.

The Virtual Venue: User-Computer Interaction in Information-Rich Virtual Environments

We present a virtual environment application that allows users to access embedded information within an immersive virtual space. Due to the richness and complexity of this environment, efficient and easy-to-use interaction techniques are a crucial requirement. The Virtual Venue seamlessly combines both twoand three-dimensional interaction techniques into a single system and utilizes previously reported as well as novel techniques that fit the task of information access. We present tools for user control of the system, travel through the environment, and information retrieval, as well as authoring tools for the creation of information-rich virtual environments. A usability study and its results are also presented and discussed. The study indicates that the use of abstract information that is tightly coupled to the virtual environment can be quite successful in enhancing the relevance of both the environment and the information. Results also show that the set of well-constrained interaction techniques presented here are usable and efficient for information retrieval.

Integrating perceptual and symbolic information in VR

The problem of integrating symbolic and perceptual information becomes more difficult in a fully immersive virtual reality, in which the computer must draw and render the whole visible apparatus in real time. The authors believe that virtual environments should convey the widest possible range of perceptual and symbolic information. They discuss virtual reality as a user interface. To explore the possibilities they create two virtual athletic venues. >

Augmented reality as a new media experience

The authors discuss their work on applying media theory to the creation of narrative augmented reality (AR) experiences. We summarize the concepts of remediation and media forms as they relate to our work, argue for their importance to the development of a new medium such as AR, and present two examples AR experiences we have designed using these conceptual tools. In particular, we focus on leveraging the interaction between the physical and virtual world, remediating existing media (film, stage and interactive CD-ROM), and building on the cultural expectations of our users.

The virtual annotation system

Annotation is a key operation for developing understanding of complex data or extended spaces. We have developed a flexible set of annotation tools that can be placed in a variety of applications. These tools offer a full set of capabilities for inserting, iconizing, playing back and organizing annotations in a virtual space. They also have an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for employing these capabilities while immersed in the virtual environment. We illustrate the annotation system with two diverse examples: a general data visualization/analysis application and an architectural walkthrough.

WE: A Writing Environment for Professionals,

Abstract : Technical and scientific professionals are writers. Regardless of title or job description, they write. We are developing a comprehensive Writing Environment (WE) for this application. In describing this system, we will emphasize five key concepts: The system is based on a cognitive model for written communication; The system is highly visual; The system was prototyped in Smalltalk and then ported to Objective C; The system will be used a series of cognitive experiments; and the system can be extended to other applications. The emphasis placed on cognitive aspects in this description probably needs more explanation. WE is one instance of an increasingly important kind of software that provides users with an environment in which to think or with functions that supplement human cognitive skills. To be successful, these intelligence augmenting systems must reflect the cognitive processes of the people using them.