Chair:Louis Perrochon
* These authors are unfortunately not able to attend the workshop due to lack of fundings or other reasons.
This (half-day) workshop offers participants of the Third International World-Wide Web Conference with W3-kiosk experience a possibility to meet and hold discussion on technical and organizational aspects of the introduction and maintenance of online kiosks based on the W3. The emphasis in the workshop is on the concept of "online". The goal is to discuss experiences with W3-kiosks that access remote data.
A clear and appealing layout is crucial to the success of a kiosk system. It is important to present information on the screen in a way that attracts potential users, and keeps them motivated throughout the session.
There are design rules that are applicable for almost any kind of document. They are derived from the areas of traditional printed media, human-computer interaction, communication theory, and Gestalt psychology.
The layout of individual pages includes the selection of its contents and its graphical appearance. Metrics for display complexity give measurements for the amount of information per page: The reader should neither be bored nor swamped by what appears on the display. Other rules address the choice of colours and the geometrical arrangement of objects on the screen.
The layout of the document as a whole has become a problem of a new dimension through the medium "hypertext": The document has to be structured into chunks of a reasonable size that are related to each other in a consistent way. This structure has to be made transparent to the user to avoid the dreaded "lost in hyperspace" symptom. The depth and breadth of the document graph has co sequences for the amount of links per page. Navigation has to be simple, intuitive, and consistent throughout the system. When designing the user interface and choosing the terms used in it, it always has to be kept in mind that the typical user of a kiosk system is a novice, not an expert in operating computers.
However, apart from this, the optimal layout usually depends on the context in which the system is to be used. This task can be used to classify kiosksystems:
This primary task has consequences for the motivation of potential users and their demands on the system concerning entertainment value, visual variety, user guidance, etc. This in turn affects many layout aspects of the system.
Although the layout features of HTML have been improved throughout its various versions, it is just one of several possible alternatives to design pages for use in kiosk systems. Those include the use of traditional authoring systems like ToolBook, MediaStyler, etc., or other Hypermedia description languages, like Hyper-G or HyTime. We will try to present some of these alternatives, their advantages and disadvantages, and their suitability to put layout guidelines into reality.
The University of Chile is the biggest and oldest university in the country, with a total current enrollment of over 19,000 students. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs in almost all areas of knowledge. In july 1993, the university's ATM network connecting its 8 campuses began to operate. This represented a milestone since it is the first national and latinamerican network of the type. As a consequence of the up-coming network, we started working on the development of an institutional W3-site < http://mordor.seci.uchile.cl > which is currently being evaluated after a 4 month period. This W3-site includes overall information about the university's activities: teaching, academic programs, cultural activities, history, research, university news, international relations, etc. In this project, a multidisciplinary group of people participated, among them, librarians, communications, graphics and computer specialists
Our admissions period takes place during the month of january, and it alawys represents an enormous effort in publicity and information that has to be provided to the potential student, because of all the resources that are used, and because of the enormous amount of students we want to reach, all living in different parts of the country.
We decided to take advantage of both the ATM network and of our W3-site in the benefit of our incoming students, at least in the city of Santiago, the capital of Chile. A multimedia kiosk was installed in 6 subway stations and in the main hall of the university in order to provide information about careers, costs, scholarships and other interesting data, to our possible candidates. The kiosk could be self-operated but we also provided help (student volunteers) for interested people who didn't know how to operate the system. Multimedia information was complemented with brochures for each faculty.
The experience proved to be successful, first because it allowed the University of Chile to be perceived as a technologically modern university, and one that is concerned about the best ways of providing information to its potential students. Second, because it enabled us to prove new ways of communicating with our target audiences, and third, because this experience was a contribution to the country's overall culture on multimedia, the INTERNET and webs, which is one of our main objectives as System of Information Services and Libraries.
The problem is how to extend, electronically, many of the traditional functions performed by City Hall to a diverse community with wide-ranging informational and educational needs. (and with minimal reliance on taxpayer revenue.)
Imagine a recent immigrant from Cape Verde, literate in Portuguese, unfamiliar with Cambridge, logging on to the City's Public Information System at one of the City's libraries. Feeling she might have been discriminated against in her recent search for housing, she sees an icon with the words "Human Rights" in Portuguese, and clicks on it. A new screen appears in Portuguese, describing the Human Rights Commission in the City of Cambridge, the City's Fair Housing Policy, what constitutes discrimination and whom to contact for further help and consultation. This scenario reflects the goals of the City of Cambridge's Public Information System.
After careful study, the City has begun to implement a citywide, Public Information System which will combine numerous information sources with a broad-based delivery system to consist of public kiosks, telephone voice-response and online dialups in a networked environment because it ensures the widest possible penetration within the community. The key objectives for this system will be:
There is an urgent need for such a system in Cambridge and surrounding communities if one considers several major factors:
Cambridge has a well documented history of citizen participation in City government. The Boston Globe reported "Cambridge has always had a high degree of public participation in Government. Roughly 83% of registered voters turned out for the '92 election, while 50-60% typically turn out for City Council elections." There are 36 boards and commissions established by ordinance with approximately 350 individual servings, plus innumerable subcommittees and task forces. Public hearings are well attended, many of which are aired on Cable TV.
In such a diverse community the demands of City government are many and Cambridge in particular has met and anticipated effectively most of the demands placed upon it through responsible fiscal management and a pro-active stance on issues of importance.
Over the past 18 months numerous meetings and collaborations grew out of the City's efforts to define and implement a Public Information System that would meet or exceed the requirements outlined above.
As early as November 10, 1992, Robert W. Healy the City Manager of Cambridge listed among the many goals and objectives for the City's coming fiscal year the implementation of an "Automated Resident Information Service". The ideas for such a system germinated when City Council Members asked the City Clerk to investigate how such a system might be developed in anticipation of the growth of the "information superhighway" and the desire to bring the benefits of technology to Cambridge citizens and businesses.
An internal commitment was made to make this public information system a reality with minimum reliance on taxpayer revenue. Vital to the implementation of this plan was securing Internet access for the City and forging strong links to community members who could donate resources to help the City.
A important outcome of the City's project is the collaboration of local government, businesses and academic institutions. This should serve as a model for other communtities wishing to undertake a similar project. In particular, the proposed Bolt, Beranek and Newman - Continental Cablevision - City effort to provide Internet access via the I-net, should it come about, will be a model for both BBN and CCV to follow as they involve themselves with other communities.
The Cambridge project is innovative not only on the state and local levels but on the national and international level as well. Cambridge is the first site served by a cable-TV metropolitan area network (MAN) and the first city to deliver government related informational resources over the MAN. This will be the backbone of the Cambridge Public Information System providing citizen access via public workstations at the Cambridge Public Library's main branch.
It is also the first project to utilize a number of existing and new technologies in partnership with local business and academic institutions with international reputations. This project can only serve to encourage further efforts by government and the private sector to develop informational resources and an information infrastructure critical to the future well being and empowerment of all our citizens.
See <http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/Cambridge/homepage.html>
In the next chaper we give a few definitions. We then present our architecture fulfilling the above restrictions and point out benefits and problems. A case study is appended at the end of the paper.
A W3 proxy server, proxy for short, normally provides access to the Web for people on closed subnets who can only access the Internet through a firewall machine. The primary use of proxies is to allow clients inside a firewall access to servers outside the firewall. [Luotonen, Altis 1994]. But as proxies are normally accessed by many clients and can thus also be used for caching of documents they are used for other purposes too. This article describes how proxies can be used to simplify maintenance of public accessible WWW-Clients.
The filtering proxy gets all requests from the browser and relyays them to the W3 servers. The incoming data is analyzed and filtered depending on the needs of the kiosk.
Finally the proxy-server collects the data required for usage statistics of the kiosk
In the introduction we stated, that the online kiosk can be implemented without changing the client. However many features for clients are on our wish-list: e.g. automatic loading of the homepage after a certain time of inactivity and configurable buttons and eror messages (e.g. different languages).
PUBDINIS is used only for information dissemination, not for information gathering, because ETH-students don't have to register for each course and registration for examinations is administrated centrally by the university and not by the department. Also all computer science students have computer-accounts with Mosaic available, tasks requiring input can be done from the computer lab directly. This removes the need for powerfull input devices on PUBDINIS kiosks.
At the time the DINIS project first started (summer 1993) no one thought about kiosks. Only the first look at the kiosk-mode of WinMosaic (2.0 alpha 6) brought up the idea. The idea of a public electronic information system in the entrance hall of the main building of ETH is quite old, but somehow it could never be realized. The installation of PUBDINIS kiosks is still hard enough, not for technical or organisational reasons, but for the protection of historical monuments which makes it impossible to drill a hole through a wall for an ethernet cable, for the inertia of a big organisation, and similar reasons.
The software of DINIS is the NCSA httpd version 1.3 running on a SUN Sparc Station 5 with 32 MByte RAM and 500 MByte harddisk. The whole machine is available for development and running of DINIS and only serves as an FTP-Server otherwise. The Software, the scripts and most of the data fit perfectly on the remaining diskspace available for users. It is also shared with the WHO's On-line server for the Computer Scientist/Consultant profession. Not all of the data resides on this server, though. Two research groups have their own W3-servers and thus two branches and some special purpose servers reside on other machines. Huge files like PostScript versions of our research papers, techical reports and dissertations, software developped at our department and similar things reside on an additional external disk. It was one of the design decisions of DINIS to integrate existing information systems like our FTP-Server. We also have a copy of CERN's httpd 3.0 running as proxy-server on the same machine. We can even afford several 10Mbyte of the diskspace for its caching.
PUBDINIS consists of a Macintosh IIfx personal computer with 8 MByte of RAM and 80MByte of Harddisk (far more than necessary), a touchscreen display, a RadiusWare Graphics Card and an ethernet card. Running on it is Netscape. The computer is directly connected to an Ethernet and fully configured as an IP-node. There are no viewers available on the kiosk.
I am working with my colleagues on the introduction of access to WWW from our library. One student of mine in Information and Library Science is studying all the problems involved as the subject of his dissertation to be completed this year. Due to a lack of time I have not (yet) been able to prepare a text on this.
Concrete questions which we have are the following:
Digital is looking to develop products in the area of W3kiosk with multimedia functionality. This document briefly describes our starting points for this work.
There is significant interest in W3 access and other advanced telecommunication tools in public environments such as:
Perceived values as seen by typical organisations looking to buy W3-kiosks include:
Why would anyone like to use it?
User demands
MM-WWW-PC specs have been developed to fill the existing gap between the power of WWW in retrieving information, and the flexibility of PCs in running interactive hypermedia applications. This makes
MM-WWW-PC particularly suitable for different purposes, such as distance education, advanced business presentation and interactive kiosks development.
MM-WWW-PC v. 2.0 consists of a series of configuration settings and a software application that has been developed using the authoring system Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook v. 3.0 (R) for Microsoft Windows.
With MM-WWW-PC you will be able to distribute your interactive PC applications using WWW, and the remote user will be able to launch them with a single mouse click from the Web page. MM-WWW-PC represents therefore an easier method to download and run locally hypermedia software using either Mosaic or Netscape browser.
MM-WWW-PC is freeware and is available at < http://www.univ.trieste.it/mmwwwpc/mmwwwpc.html >
Look for the MOSAIC.INI file in the WINDOWS directory, load it into a text editor and make these changes/additions:
Add a new data type reference in the [VIEWERS] section, writing a new line in sequence to the existing ones.
When you are retrieving information from an HTTP/1.X server (the most popular), the server automatically types data for you. It means that changing settings to your local Web browser is not enough to be MM-WWW-PC compliant.
You need to add the following line to the configuration file MIME.TYPES of your WWW server, so that it contains this reference:
The following interactive applications available on MM-WWW-PC Web can be launched with a single mouse click and are able to keep basic control over the browser window.
SCRIPTA Project - The History of Writing
Thanks to the new MM-WWW-PC v. 2.0 features that allow a closer interaction with the Web browser, it is possible now to retrieve and launch automatically from your Toolbook application any other MM-WWW-PC compliant software that resides on a remote server.
Launching a MM-WWW-PC Network Book (see below) from one of the sites that will join the initiative, you will be able to reach with simple mouse clicks all other Network members, avoiding the manual input of the URLs in the browser.
Joining the MM-WWW-PC Network is very simple. You have to follow these steps:
Should you have difficulties in finding a server where to put your MM-WWW-PC Network Book, you can be guest for a limited period of time of the WWW disk space of Trieste's University. Please contact the author about this offer.
isBrowserOpen()
Returns the name of the current running browser
browserWinMode (..)
Controls the position and state of the browser window (i.e. onTop, on the back,
maximized, iconized...)
appWinMode (..)
Controls the position and state of the application window (i.e. onTop, on the
back, maximized, iconized...)
runBrowser (..)
Tries to launch the browser
getURL (..)
Instructs the browser to resolve a specified URL
printURL()
Prints the current page displayed by the browser
quitWindow (..)
Quits the browser or the current application
taskSwitch (..)
Enables/Disables the Windows task switch mode.-
Multimedia authoring systems offer more control over the layout design, therefore the impact of a kiosk designed with an authoring system will be greater. The designer of a kiosk has to weigh the advantage of networked information against the advantage of layout control when deciding how to implement the kiosk. In order to encourage the implementation of kiosks on the WWW, layout concerns should be better addressed in the format of documents. To this end, we propose an extension to HTML that allows the designer to specify background images, place text at specific locations, and control the color of the displayed text.
We propose an extension that allows breaking up an HTML file into multiple containers. Each of these containers can be positioned within the one main container within the browser's display area. The containers format their own HTML text according to their defined width. The foreground and background colors of each subcontainer can be set independently as the designer wishes. In addition, the background can be set to be transparent so that text can appear on top of an image in another container.
Fig. 1 illustrates a main menu screen that uses transparent subcontainers to place text and hyperlinks on top of a background image.
<!%%BC POS=#,#,#,# FG=color
BG=color>
HTML text here ...
<!%%EC>
The line containing <!%%BC> marks the beginning of a subcontainer, <!%%EC> marks the end. The HTML text between these two codes will be placed within the subcontainer. The POS argument is used to position the container within its parent container. The POS list consists of four numbers that represent the pixel location for the top, bottom, left, and right edges respectively. The FG and BG codes are optional; these codes set the foreground and background colors for the subcontainer. By setting "BG = trans", the background color of the subcontainer becomes transparent so that text can be written on top of the images underneath.
Two command line arguments were also added to Moonsaic, to ease its use in kiosk environments. The first is "-kiosk", which removes the menubar, title and URL labels, the busy icon, and all of the buttons from the bottom except Forward, Back, and Home. In this mode, the window contains less distractions for the user, so that the focus of attention is on the kiosk display itself.
The second command line argument is "-timeout <min>". This sets a timer, so that if no actions have been taken in <min> minutes, the browser returns to its home page. In this way, a new user approaching the kiosk will see the opening screen, and not the page from which the last user left off.
Results Using the container codes, we have been able to achieve some graphic design effects that are not possible with standard HTML. Fig. 2 shows the use of container codes to place a picture in a specific location and the layout of paragraphs along a diagonal indentation scheme.
We have also used the FG=color parameter to implement a text highlighting box. One item from a list of text items is highlighted in yellow, depending on what the user has selected.
Using the BG=trans parameter, we have been able to create a background image for the kiosk, placing the text directly on top of the image. In this case, it is important to set the foreground color so that there is enough contrast between the text color and the background image. By overlapping two containers, one slightly below and to the right of the other with its forground color set to black, we have been able to create the effect of shadowed text.
At the Darmstadt workshop we will demonstrate our new browser and what can be accomplished with it.
Jan Borchers
Institute for Operating and Dialog Systems
University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
Tel: ++49-721-608-3966
Fax: ++49-721-696989
job@ira.uka.de
Marco M. Büchel
Abteilung für Informatik, ETH Zürich
8092 Zürich, Switzerland
mmbueche@iiic.ethz.ch
Oliver Deussen
Institute for Operating and Dialog Systems
University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
Tel: ++49-721-608-3966
Fax: ++49-721-696989
oliver@ira.uka.de
Bengt Hedin
Internet Business Group, Digital Equipment Corporation (Europe)
S-172 89 Sundbyberg, SWEDEN
Tel: 46 8 629 7033
Fax: 46 8 28 85 36
bengt.hedin@jar.mts.dec.com
Patricia Hörmann
WWW Coordinator, University of Chile
Sistema de Servicios de Información y Bibliotecas
Address: Alameda 1058, oficina 123, Santiago, Chile
Tel: (562) 671-1419
Fax: (562) 6717-7767
phormann@abello.seci.uchile.cl
Hans Joseph
Fraunhofer Center for Research in Computer Graphics, Inc., Providence,RI
hjoseph@crcg.edu
Clemens Knörzer
Institute for Operating and Dialog Systems
University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe, Germany
Tel: ++49-721-608-3967
Fax: ++49-721-696989
knoerzer@ira.uka.de
Todd N Marinoff
Senior System/Program Analyst
Cambridge City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617.349.4147
Fax: 617.349.4142
cambmis@ai.mit.edu or laszlo@athena.mit.edu
Paul Nieuwenhuysen
Head of Information & Documentation of the University Library
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium.
Tel. 2 629 2436 (directly) or 2 629 2609 (secretary) or 2 629 2429 (assistant:
P. Vanouplines)
Fax. 2 629 2693 (secretary)
pnieuwen@vnet3.vub.ac.be
Louis Perrochon
Institut für Informationssysteme, ETH Zürich
8092 Zürich, Switzerland
Tel: +41 1 632 72 82
Fax: +41 1 632 11 72
perrocho@inf.ethz.ch
Peter Szmulik
Internet Business Group, Digital Equipment Corporation (Europe)
S-172 89 Sundbyberg, SWEDEN
Tel: 46 8 629 7033
Fax: 46 8 28 85 36
peter.szmulik@soo.mts.dec.com
Paolo Tosolini
University of Trieste
Via Bembo, 5 - 34015 Muggia (TS) - ITALY
Tel: +39-360-877243 / +39-40-275030
Fax. +39-40-311850
tosolini@psicosun.univ.trieste.it