Presentation given at DocEng 2018, 18th ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, Halifax, Canada, August 2018 ABSTRACT: Documents do often not exist in isolation but are implicitly or explicitly linked to parts of other documents. However, due to a multitude of proprietary document formats with rather simple link models, today's possibilities for creating hyperlinks between snippets of information in different document formats are limited. In previous work, we have presented a dynamically extensible cross-document link service overcoming the limitations of the simple link models supported by most existing document formats. Based on a plug-in mechanism, our link service enables the linking across different document types. In this paper, we assess the extensibility of our link service by integrating some document formats as well as third-party document viewers. We illustrate the flexibility of creating advanced hyperlinks across these document formats and viewers that cannot be realised with existing linking solutions or link models of existing document formats. A user study further investigates the user experience when creating and navigating cross-document hyperlinks. Paper: https://www.academia.edu/36550753/Cross_Media_Document_Linking_and_Navigation

1. 2 December 2005
Cross-Media Document Linking and Navigation
Ahmed A.O. Tayeh, Payam Ebrahimi and Beat Signer
Web & Information Systems Engineering Lab
Department of Computer Science
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
WEB & INFORMATION
SYSTEMS ENGINEERING

2. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 2August 30, 2018
Working With Documents
 26% of reading and writing tasks include cross-document
referencing
 Use of annotations and folders to create references
 56% of knowledge workers not satisfied with existing mechanisms
 75% of knowledge workers indicated the need for a tool
to associate information

3. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 3August 30, 2018
Missing Cross-Document Linking
×
×
×
Word document PDF document

4. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 4August 30, 2018
Existing Support for Hyperlinks

5. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 5August 30, 2018
Existing Hypermedia Systems
 Limited extensibility
 on the data as well as
on the visual level
 Limited support of
third-party viewers
MADCOW: A Multimedia Digital Annotation
System, Paolo Bottoni et al., In Proceedings of
AVI 2004

6. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 6August 30, 2018
DocFormat 1 DocFormat 2
C R U D
Menu
Gateways
Link Model
DocFormat 1
Gateways Data Plug-ins Visual Plug-ins Add-ins
DocFormat 2 DocFormat 3
Database
Add-in
Gateway
DocFormat 3
Third-party
document
viewer
DocFormat 3
Data plug-ins
Visual plug-in Visual plug-in
DeveloperEnd user
Link browser
write and upload
plug-ins and add-ins
search and download
plug-ins and add-ins
visualise documents, create,
navigateand edit hyperlinks
Link service
Communication
Channels
Plug-in tracking
Gateway ...
Gateway plug-ins
RESTful API
search and
retrieve plug-ins
Online Plug-in Repository

7. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 7August 30, 2018
Visual Plug-ins

8. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 8August 30, 2018
Extensibility Usability Evaluation
1. Integration of a number of document formats
 link browser
- PDF, XML, plain text and images
 third-party document viewers
- Google Chrome, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint
2. How easy can other document formats be integrated?
3. End-user usability study

9. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 9August 30, 2018
Plain Text and PDF

10. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 10August 30, 2018
HTML

11. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 11August 30, 2018
YouTube

12. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 12August 30, 2018
Microsoft Word and PowerPoint

13. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 13August 30, 2018
Images

14. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 14August 30, 2018
XML

15. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 15August 30, 2018
How Easy Can Other Formats be Integrated?
 Visualisation in link browser
 available Java library
 definition of selectors
 visualisation of selectors
 Visualisation in third-party viewer
 extensible viewer
 definition of selectors
 visualisation of selectors
 support of communication channel

16. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 16August 30, 2018
Visualisation in Link Browser

17. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 17August 30, 2018
Visualisation in Third-Party Viewer

18. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 18August 30, 2018
End-User Evaluation
 Mixed method approach
 14 participants (7 males) aged between 23 and 37 (M=27)
 non-computer scientists (from VUB)
 Quantitative evaluation
 CSUQ questionnaire with 19 questions evaluating four different
usability aspects
- ease of use (SYSUSE)
- information quality (INFOQUAL)
- interface quality (INTERQUAL)
- overall satisfaction (OVERALL)
 Qualitative evaluation via semi-structured interviews

19. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 19August 30, 2018
Setup
 Only two document formats (plain text and Word)
 Brief explanation of study objectives
 Explanation of supported functionality
 Participants had to perform a number of tasks
 creating, navigating, deleting and editing of bi- and
multidirectional hyperlinks
 extend the link service to support PDF and HTML
 creating and navigating multidirectional hyperlinks between the
four document formats
 Questionnaire followed by a semi-structured interview

20. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 20August 30, 2018
Quantitative Results

21. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 21August 30, 2018
Aspects to be Improved
 Participants confused about hyperlink sources and targets
 Avoid technical concepts
 Avoid confusion in third-party viewer
 Provide explanations (manuals) via videos

22. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 22August 30, 2018
Conclusions
 Contributions
 technical evaluation with a number of document formats
- PDF, plain text, XML, images
- Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Google Chrome, YouTube
 technical evaluation of extensibility with other document formats
 initial end-user evaluation
 Future Work
 integration of additional document formats
 user study with third-party developers
 manageability and maintainability of hyperlinks

23. Ahmed A.O. Tayeh - Department of Computer Science - atayeh@vub.be 23August 30, 2018
References
 A.A.O. Tayeh, P. Ebrahimi and B. Signer,
Cross-Media Document Linking and Navigation,
Proceedings of the 18th ACM Symposium on Document
Engineering (DocEng 2018), Halifax, Canada,
August 2018
 http://beatsigner.com/publications/tayeh_DocEng2018.pdf