NOTES ON USAGE
Collaborative work in complicated areas requires certain level of maturity from members of the group. One has to understand the implications of expressing own, subjective opinions, of ones influence on other members- to have good estimation and a policy when to present ones opinions, how deeply, when and where to seek consultation. To be capable of such and to be ready to accept the strictness of such an enviroment, are the prerequirements of effective usage of the proposed media.
Despite the formulations stressing usability in groupwork up to this point, the potential of this media for individual usage are equally dramatic.
ORIGINS OF THE DESIGN
One of the basic properties of information seems to be an everpresent encapsulation in some medium through which it is being transmitted- bending below the intristic limits of storing, retreival and deteoriation due to factors like time spent in the medium and the transfer itself. The deteoriation seems media specific, however, the type as well as the details and encoding of the information might render it robust, fragile, plastic, etc.
There are several areas which require careful consideration when designing any information exchange. Very roughly divided- the information source and destination, the nature of the carrier, the inner structuring of carrier, encoding of the information as well as interfaces between those elements- have certain properties which may not be ignored in the design. Many of the problems we are having around digital space, like for example piracy of copyrighted material, are connected with misunderstanding of the those most basic properties.
From the viewpoint of R&D workers as the source and destination elements of this system, following problems arise:
PROPOSED MEDIA
I took inspiration from linear, non-linear and interactive media. Due to the nature of linear text and the unevitability of rooting a categorisation, I'm finding it hard to write down a clear reasoning. Such would be much easier in a dialogue, where the linearity can be broken by questions- and explanations can be guided by following non-verbal signals. In dialogue, there are certain turning points- some permitt questions, at some a deeper explanation could come but one decides to skip over them. Theese turning points, they have no names, nothing predefined in them- they plainly exist. This explains the nature of the media very well- it is of the linear kind, but at certain spots, deeper knowledge unfolds on request. All spots look the same. The explanation on the unfolding and the nature of the spots follows.
The standard non-linear media, HTML, is capable of cracking problems stated before. When used in a standard fashion however, opening areas of deeper knowledge by clicking on a link or switching to another tab hides the context and after a while, one looses easily the flow. Therefor, I find a linear unfold inside the "shallower knowledge" more apropriate. There are many types of non-linearity and this is one of them. So the detail-level of information, at first hidden, would unroll lineary inside the higher level- as a paragraph, or formatted in any other fitting way. Ideally, either the text or the resulting unfolded structure should keep the whole fluidly readable, at all stages of unfolding. The possibility of back-folding should be available.
Both types of users (designers/engeneers) would at first see only the basic layer. The engeneer would as well see where the information can unroll and could click on such spots to get into fuller detail. The designer variant would hide existance of such spots and only show them when an unhide button is clicked, possibly restrained to area selected by mouse- having the possibility to unfold them afterwards. This is in accord with absolute non-interference of thought processes. The even deeper layers would behave in the same fashion, per type of user. Obviously, the media should include the option of selecting type of user.
Here is a list of families of functionality implementable, only roughly ordered, with short explanations and only the most basic examples. Concretizing would mean selecting one of the multitude of enviroments where the media could get used- I didn't want to do that. A full listing of possibilities would trap other co-creators in my framework, so I kept only the absolute necessary to clearly grasp the concept. To further strengthen the relevance of research in those areas, I want to point out, that although I'm not informed, quite some depth can be reached from the contents of this text as whole.
student, biologist, general public
) can be cleverly used as "intelligence behind edit", "apropriate framework", etc.
Php/Javascript/CSS stack (or simmilar) seems to me the most easy variant to implement. Depending on the tools at your disposal, using simple html but tweaking the viewer might be a better option.