Principles of Interactive Multimedia introduces all the contributory fields that are necessary for informed, thoughtful design and development of multimedia systems to be delivered through CD, the web or other mechanisms. It adopts an inter-disciplinary approach. The focus is to explain the basics of all the contributing disciplines to the design of systems. The book equips readers to think about multimedia issues, at the same time as they are learning and applying skills. It will encourage development, innovation and creative operation using the tools of multimedia. Multimedia workers operate in teams with differing skills, and this book will give each member of the team an understanding of the skills of the rest of the team and hence a means of communicating with them effectively. It is closely related to the needs of practice and the real world, while being leading edge in what it proposes. Written by an Author with many years'||''' experience as lecturer and practitioner in multimedia applications, the book focuses on the underpinning models behind multimedia. Hitherto, practice has been to teach the material primarily as skill-based, with comparatively little theory of any sort, and no integrated theory at all. The subject is now reaching the level of maturity where such theory is being recognised as essential to the provision of adequate courses as an academic discipline. The book provides this integrated theoretical base by focussing on interaction as the key to system design, and particularly by using linguistic models to underpin a communication interpretation of multimedia. This unification is unique, but has been used with students over several years and is well received by those from both science and arts backgrounds. It has been positively received by other academics who have seen it.

Table of Contents:
Ch1: What is interactive multimedia? 1) Introduction. 2) Multimedia. Modalities. Channels. Medium. So what is multimedia? 3) Interaction. Action and interaction. Physical interaction. Communicative interaction. Summary. 4) A brief history of computers and multimedia. Tape control devices. Branching systems. Computer presented media. 5) A brief history of computers & interaction. External memory. External algorithms. The first computer. 6) So - what is imm?. Ch2: Communicative interaction. 1) Introduction. 2) Objects and agents. 3) Channels of communication. 4) Formal languages. 5) '||'''Natural'||''' communication. 6) Languages of non-interaction. 7) Meta-languages? 8) Components of imm. Ch3: Knowledge. 1) Introduction. 2) Why does knowledge matter? 3) The basic idea of knowledge. 3.1) Information, knowledge and belief. 3.2) Organisation of knowledge. 4) A working definition. 5) Techniques of knowledge representation. 5.1) Declarative knowledge. 5.2) Procedural knowledge. 5.3) When do procedures become declarative?. 6) Techniques of knowledge elicitation. Ch4: Understanding users. Why are users important? Things you might know about a user. 2.1) Task models. 2.2) What is a user? 2.3) Organising user knowledge. Background and foreground knowledge. Cognitive, conative and affective components. Cognitive. Conative. Affective. 3) How to apply user knowledge. 3.1) What can be adjusted? 3.2) User centred design. 3.3) Adapted (customised) Systems. 3.4) Adaptive systems. 4) How to acquire user knowledge. Research - background - demographics. Pretesting. Asking. Testing during interaction. Inference. 5) Techniques: user profiling. 6) Techniques: user modelling. 6.1) Subset modelling. 6.2) Perturbation modelling. 6.3) Extending the user models. 7) Summary and conclusions. Ch5: Interaction and HCI. 1) What is interaction in practice? 2) The idea of '||'''interface'||'''. 3) Iconography. 4) Devices (i/o). 5) Ergonomics. 6) HCI. 7) Formal models of the interface. 7.1) Prove before build. 7.2) Mental models of the interface. 7.3)accessibility and usability. 8) Communicative interaction and the interface. 8.1) If and dialogue. 8.2) If and channels. 8.3) If and multimedia. 9) Guidelines and rules. 9.1) Low-level stuff. 10) Dialogue model interfaces. 11) Natural language interfaces. Ch6: Semiotics. 1) Multimedia content. 2) What is semiotics? 3) The idea of sign. Terminology. Signifier, signified and referent. Symbolic, iconic and indexical. Language, utterance and code. Construction of signs. Context and culture. 4) More complex signs. 5) Introducing myth. 6) Semiotics and media. Ch7: Text as a medium. 1) Images on a page. When does an image become a letter? When does a letter become a word? Pictograms, fonts and font families. The alphabet as a visual concept. 2) A (short) History of writing and painting. 3) The sound of text. Structure. Intonation. Emphasis. 4) The concept of readability. Psychology of reading. Standard measures. 5) Layout and readability. 6) Document styles. Narrative. Prose. Manuals. References. Tutorials. 7) Metalanguages. Metalanguage and style. Power of metalanguage. 8) Text and the screen. Ch8: Sound. 1) The spoken word. Verite recording. Talking live and for tape. A history of recording media. Aspects of speaking. 1.1) Scripting for speaking. 1.2) Editing. 2) Sound effects. 2.1) Non-natural. 2.2) Natural (etc.). 3) Music. 3.1) One note. 3.2) Scale. 3.3) What is rhythm? 3.4) Musical genre and interpretation. 4) Sound in a digital age. Ch9: Still pictures. 1) Cartoons. 1.1) Abstraction and minimalism. 1.2) Political cartoons. 2) Painting. 2.1) Visual grammars. 3) Still photographs. 3.1) History of the camera (pre-film). 3.2) Film and reality. 3.3) Communicating with image. 3.4) Authenticity and image. 3.5) Beyond the human eye. 4) Sequences of still images. 4.1) Magic lantern. 4.2) Temporal and spatial context. 4.3) Cartoon strips. 4.4) Slide projection. Ch10: Moving images. 1) Introduction. 2) Animation. 3) "live" action. 3.1) Origins - fixed point '||'''documentary'||'''. 3.2) Links to theatre? 3.3) Film as reality or toy? Does '||'''art'||''' matter? 3.4) A language of reality? 3.5) The studio. 3.6) The shot. 3.7) Closer to reality? 3.8) Scripts and drama. 3.9) Filming emotion. 4.0) The idea of '||'''ultimate'||''' cinema. 4) Film is not video. 4.1) Imitating film language with video. 4.2) Technical differences and their effects. 4.3) Live editing. 4.4) Language of errors. 4.5) Technology effects. 5) The digital world. 5.1) Complex visual channels. 5.2) Created '||'''real'||''' images. 6) Virtual reality, immersion and control. Ch11: Stakeholders and teamworking. 1) Importance of teamwork. 2) Players and roles. 3) Communication problems and processes. 4) Documentation for the team. Ch12: Product design processes. 1) Standard design processes. 2) Issues for multimedia. 3) Categories of multimedia systems. 3.1) Flow-based. 3.2) Hyper-based. 3.3) Object based. 3.4) Agent based. 4) An integrated design process for interactive multimedia. 5) Evaluation and testing. 6) Product documentation. Ch 13: Project design and management. 1) Project design. 2) Special issues for multimedia. 3) Project management. 4) Documentation. 5) Deployment of systems. Ch 14: Future trends. 1) Conceptual changes. 2) Cultural evolution. 3) Technological models. 4) Hot topics for the immediate future.