Information Design Models and Processes: introduction to a special issue

David Lowe

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WIED: A Web Modelling Language for Modelling Architectural-Level Information Flows

Rachatrin Tongrungrojana, David Lowe

The ability to reliably and consistently develop systems that utilise Internet and Web technologies has become increasingly important. These systems are typically both functionally complex and information-rich, and have a number of unique characteristics that should imply specific changes to the development processes, methods and models that are adopted. One aspect that has received increasing attention is information modelling for these applications, particularly with respect to aspects such as navigation models and their relationships to the underlying content. These models have typically focussed on modelling at a relatively low-level, however, and have failed to address higher-level aspects, such as architectural and even business process modelling. The paper introduces a formal information modelling set which can be considered as a companion to to an existing modelling language - WebML - that facilitates information modelling at this higher level of abstraction. We argue that this modelling approach will provide a clearer connection between an understanding of business models and processes, and the lower-level designs typically represented in existing models.

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The PlumbingXJ Approach for Fast Prototyping of Web Applications

Antonio Navarro, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón, Alfredo Fernández-Valmayor, José Luis Sierra

The paper presents the PlumbingXJ approach for fast prototyping of hypermedia Web applications. PlumbingXJ is a process model driven by the use of the hypermedia-oriented model Pipe. Pipe is a formalised graphical notation that splits the characterisation of hypermedia applications into two parts: the contents graph and the navigational schema. The contents graph is focused on the contents of the application and their semantic relationships. The navigational schema is focused on the characterisation of the graphical user interface, and the navigational relationships among the elements of this user interface. Both components are related with the canalisation functions that describe the navigational interpretation of the contents and relationships in the user interface. In addition, Pipe presents a default browsing semantics that describes the behaviour of the application after an anchor has been selected. The use of the Pipe model at the conceptualisation stage of a well-known process model produces the Plumbing process model. Our approach uses a specialised Plumbing process model using XML and Java to materialize the Pipe structures at the prototyping stage, obtaining another process model called PlumbingXJ. The paper describes the graphical notation associated with Pipe, the Plumbing process model, and how the use of XML and Java at the conceptualisation stage in PlumbingXJ produces a viable approach for fast prototyping of Web applications. The XML and Java techniques are compared with several markup technologies available for the development of hypermedia and Web applications.

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AriadneTool: A Design Toolkit for Hypermedia Applications

Susana Montero, Paloma Diaz, Juan Manuel Dodero, Ignacio Aedo

The increasing size and complexity of hypermedia and Web applications puts stress on the need for using design models and methods whenever quality, usability, maintainability or reusability are critical. Moreover, to make the tasks of developers and designers more straightforward and effective, such models and methods should be supported by software tools providing explicit guidance during the development process as well as fast-prototyping. The paper introduces a design environment called AriadneTool that assumes the Ariadne Development Method (ADM). ADM proposes a systematic, iterative and user-centered approach to develop hypermedia and Web applications that deals with six design perspectives in an integrated way: navigation, presentation, structure, behavior, processes and access. The AriadneTool toolkit automates the ADM development process, offering interfaces to create the different products of the method. It also incorporates the use of ontologies to facilitate semantic support that allows for checking the consistency of modelling and for improving the users' understanding of the method. Once the designer has created the specifications of the system, the toolkit makes it possible to generate documentation concerning the system design, to validate the different products or to produce HTML, XML, SMIL and RDF implementation templates automatically.

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Critical Feature Method - A Lightweight Web Maintenance Methodology for SMEs

Xiaoying Kong, Li Liu, David Lowe

Security threats, dynamic business environments and the ambiguous multi-jurisdictional arrangements governing Internet businesses often impose urgent change demands on businesses operating on the Internet - demands which are not well handled by existing Web development approaches. The paper proposes a lightweight Web maintenance methodology for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) which is designed to effectively handle urgent change requests such as emergency situations that are common to Web systems. The methodology involved analysing the Web maintenance states and classifying these into three distinct states. The proposed process can be integrated with the normal evolution of Web systems. The methodology is underpinned by: a set of core values that emphasise collaboration between chief developer and the business executives; minimal feedback loops; close involvement of business executives; and rapid design focusing on identified critical features. Two rapid prototyping approaches are proposed as part of the methodology. The Critical Feature Matrix and Normal Feature Matrix are introduced to replace the onerous conventional documentation.

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Managing Content with Automatic Document Classification

Rafael A. Calvo, Jae-Moon Lee, Xiabo Li

News articles and Web directories represent some of the most popular and commonly accessed content on the Web. Information designers normally define categories that model these knowledge domains (i.e. news topics or Web categories) and domain experts assign documents to these categories. The paper describes how machine learning and automatic document classification techniques can be used for managing large numbers of news articles, or Web page descriptions, lightening the load on domain experts. The paper uses two datasets, one with with more than 800,000 Reuters news stories and another with over 41,000 Web sites, and classifies them using a Naïve Bayes algorithm, into predefined categories. We discuss the different parameters and design decisions that normally appear when building automatic classifiers, including, stemming, stop-words, thresholding, amount of data and approaches for improving performance using the structure in XML documents. The methodology developed would enable Web based applications or workflow systems to manage information more efficiently, i.e. by assigning documents to topics automatically or assisting humans in the process of doing so.

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