Design abstractions for Multimedia Scenario Design:
Media Construction Patterns
Jocelyne Nanard, Marc Nanard, Peter King
New Review of Multimedia and Hypermedia, Special issue on space and time, vol 6, pp 47-87, 2000,
ABSTRACT
Most of the current work on the temporal aspects of hypermedia is oriented towards implementation and rendering. Relatively little work has been directed towards the design of hypermedia artifacts, particularly artifacts comprising large sets of media items with rich sets of temporal relationships. We introduce the media construction pattern MCP, a new formalism for design abstractions for multimedia scenario specifications. MCP provides constructs that can be understood and manipulated by designers at different levels of granularity and detail. MCP relies on a temporal model similar to that of SMIL Boston, but targets design issues. MCP supports abstraction and re-use at the artifact design level and uses the notion of design patterns and the metaphor of roles, players and actors, to provide generic design descriptions. MCP provides an integrated specification of spatial, temporal, and object behavior, including composition which may depend on run time events. MCP provides a designer-friendly environment, incorporating a visual representation of partial designs together with a special-purpose structured editor.
Keywords
Multimedia, design, visual formalism, abstraction, role, media construction pattern, continuity, scenario.
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