Information Design
Information Design researchers at GVU are concerned with the planning and
implementation of digital texts and environments; in particular, we focus
on integrating the visual, textual, and aural components of these environments
into a "look and feel" aimed at producing specific reactions or effects in targeted
users. Our research explores issues in aesthetics, cognitive science, cultural studies,
education, engineering, and rhetoric, helping us to build digital systems through which
users can more effectively communicate, interact, and learn.
Current Research Projects
- Cognitive multimedia support environments --
an on-going research effort to develop multimedia systems to support human learning
and problem solving, based on cognitive principles and guidelines from cognitive science.
- HyperCafe -- an
experimental hypermedia prototype, developed as an illustration of a general hypervideo system. This
program places the user in a virtual cafe, composed primarily of digital video clips of actors involved in fictional
conversations in the cafe; HyperCafe allows the user to follow different conversations, and offers dynamic opportunities of
interaction via temporal, spatio-temporal and textual links to present alternative narratives.
- MetaWeb -- a tool that allows site administrators
to delegate responsibility for page maintenance to the individual user, while still
retaining control over the appearance and design of the finished page. It accomplishes this through the interaction between
HTML forms, accessible on the Web itself, and pre-formatted HTML templates that reside on the server.
- Reality Check -- educational
software that aids educators in the development of "authentic" tasks for students aged 12 to adult -- tasks that
are acknowledged by students as corresponding to their own experiences and prior understanding. The metaphor underlying
Reality Check is that of education-as-argumentation.
Affiliated Researchers
Faculty
Students
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