Towards a new generation of information environment for the use of e-documents

Abstract

This research examines how electronic documents (e-documents) such as electronic journals (e-journals) could be enhanced in the electronic environment to make them more valuable to end-users. In particular, it investigates how a wide range of information searching, analysis and communicating tasks involved in interacting with e-documents could be supported within a single user interface (UI) environment, using e-journals as an example of e-documents. The research tasks completed in the study include the elicitation of user needs and wants, a comprehensive review of latest research developments in electronic publishing and e-documents, derivation of a new set of information and interaction properties that are necessary for a new digital environment to support enhanced access and value-adding to e-documents, and the design of a platform (PROPIE) to demonstrate the use of various features and functionality to support creative and effective e-document use. Providing a suite of novel features and interactive tools that could be flexibly combined, PROPIE allowed users to apply multiple novel ways to intuitively query and navigate information in e-documents. The querying and browsing processes in PROPIE were supported by various interactive and visualization techniques. A set of interface mock-ups was developed to demonstrate the potential of PROPIE in supporting the design of a new-generation of e-journals. Following that, a series of empirical evaluations of various aspects of the environment was conducted using up to a sample of 83 graduate students in three separate tiers to obtain representative users’ feedback with regard to interacting with e-journals. This paper reports the major research findings of these evaluations. In particular, it describes the types of features, tools and interaction identified as desirable and required in future e-journals systems. The conclusions were that top-ranked features of e-journals were those not available in print journals and included those of querying, navigation and visualization that contributed to enhanced access, advanced interaction and value-adding contents.