Arbeitspapiere Der Gmd 580 Gmd – Forschungszentrum Informationstechnik Gmbh

The successful use of hypermedia systems is often impeded by user disorientation or cognitive overhead caused by the non-linear arrangement of hypertext nodes. In this paper, we address the related problem how a user can be supported in his/her construction of coherence during the navigation through a hyperdocument. Instead of leaving this task to the hypertext author or designer alone, we propose to share the responsibility among author, user, and system. As a consequence, we claim that hypermedia systems should apply a pragmatic model of navigation to achieve intelligent dialogue control. We choose a case-based architecture. The case-based dialogue manager (CADI) disposes of several dialogue plans and can adapt the current plan to the dialogue situation. The user determines the concrete navigation course by selecting a thematical perspective. A prototype (accessing a conference information base) shows the feasibility of assembling the contents of nodes with respect to a user perspective. The nodes are automatically filled with information from the underlying knowledge base.