A Pattern Approach to Support Digital Interpretation

Candidate: Zhenyu (Cheryl) Qian
Type: Master of Applied Science, MASc, School of Interactive Arts and Technology
Date: April 2, 2004
Senior Supervisor: Dr. Rob Woodbury

Abstract

This thesis aims to investigate the phenomenon that people act in similar fashion across a variety of tasks using computers.  It posits a concept digital interpretation comprising patters of learning, working and entertaining that people engage in with computers.

This work first observes that digital tools often seem to offer support that is subsidiary to a user's intentions.  Using a range of readings, it describes intentions and tasks that users engage with when using common authoring tools.  These tasks are higher-order in the sense that themedia in which they are undertaken provides support only in terms of their components.  Many such tasks sit between receptive acts of reading and outright creation of intellectual works.  Interpretation is a useful label, which turns reading-authoring continuum into space where user acts occupy uncertain locations within a reading-interpretation-authoring triangle.  Distinct kinds of acts and expectations cluster around points in this space.

The thesis uses two research strategies: a literature review and a search for potential design features using a pattern-based approach to analyse digital interpretation.  Thest two strategies are undertaken seperately in Chapter 3 and chapter 5, and spliced with each other.  In this work, ideas from literature review inform the search, and feature analysis reflects and develops the literature reviews.  The search for design features yields some novel ideas and creates a cluster of concepts that could form the basis for a set of future design moves in the space of tools. Such tools enable interpreters to shape and combine knowledge artifacts into self-designed constructions of meaning and knowledge.  I use the concept of pattern to gather, catalogue, analyse and represent these concepts.  Chapter 5 discusses nine main patterns from three pattern families - reflection, multiple poaching and shifting.  These patterns not only suggest design moves for digital interpretation, but also attempt to move towards support for a digital interpreter in addition to a reader and and author.  Therefore, they support digital interpretation from two levels: tools and interpreters.

This thesis itself is an example of the digital interpretation I try to describe in its content.