Empirically Derived Multimedia Design Guidelines for Browsing Large Volumes of EMail Data.pdfVIP

ANNALS OF MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING TELEINFORMATICS, VOL 1, NO 1, 2003, PP 77-83 77 Empirically Derived Multimedia Design Guidelines for Browsing Large Volumes of E-Mail Data Dimitris Rigas Department of Computing, School of Informatics University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK D.Rigas@bradford.ac.uk Abstract— This paper introduces multimedia design I. INTRODUCTION guidelines for browsing large volumes of e-mail data. These software design guidelines derived from two sets Raphical browsing of e-mail data produces com- of experiments under a prototype version of a multimedia Gplex graphs or displays. Visual complexity in- e-mail tool. The experiments tested various forms of audio- creases as more e-mail messages are introduced. In visual communication metaphors. For example, the audi- order to reduce complexity, software designers filter tory stimuli consisted of musical sounds (earcons), com- the presented information in a way that the displays positional sounds, environmental sounds (auditory icons), stereophony, pitch, synthesised and recorded speech as produced are easily read and comprehended. The fil- well as other sound effects. The first set of experiments tered information is therefore either hidden from the involved the multimedia browsing of simple and complex user or shown in another instance of the visual display. sets of e-mail data. The second set of the experiments Both approaches introduce disadvantages. Sometimes, involved