End-user Construction and Configuration of Distributed Multimedia Applications

DOCTOR OF SCIENCE DISSERTATION

T. Paul McCartney

Distributed multimedia applications supported by a global electronic infrastructure have tremendous potential for providing users with customized communication and computation environments. Since communication and computation requirements vary by context and change dynamically, it is unlikely that off-the-shelf applications will anticipate the needs of all users. Therefore, empowering end-users to create their own customized applications for both communication and computation is an important challenge. This dissertation presents several mechanisms that enable end-users to create and configure distributed multimedia applications, including end-user construction direct manipulation graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and application management of distributed multimedia applications over the Internet.

This dissertation is done in the context of The Programmers' Playground, a software library and run-time system for creating distributed multimedia applications. The focus of this dissertation is the human-computer interaction (HCI) aspects of The Programmers' Playground, allowing end-users to construct and use distributed multimedia applications without the need for programming, compiling, writing scripts, or interacting with the UNIX shell. HCI contributions include a multi-way constraint algorithm, constraint-based editing & visualization, separation of applications from GUIs, support for the construction of multi-user applications, end-user definable widgets, end-user definable aggregate mappings, and World Wide Web-based application management.

KEYWORDS: application management, constraints, direct manipulation, distributed computing, graphical user interfaces, multimedia, user interface management system

Dissertation Committee

Ken Goldman (chair)
Michael Kahn
Dan Kimura
Eileen Kraemer
Brad Myers

Dissertation in Pieces

Due to the size of the postscript version (i.e., because of figures) the dissertation is divided into three different files. The actual length is 188 pages. The color appendix contains copies of several figures from the main body, and should be printed on a color printer.

Chapters 1 - 7. postscript (.ps) (5 MB), compressed (.ps.Z) (1.8 MB).
Color Appendix. postscript (.ps) (4.1 MB), compressed (.ps.Z) (1.4 MB).
Appendices, References. postscript (.ps) (3.4 MB), compressed (.ps.Z) (420 K).

Dissertation defense color slides: postscript (.ps) and compressed (.ps.Z).

Reference as:

McCartney, T. Paul. End-user Construction and Configuration of Distributed Multimedia Applications. D.Sc. Thesis, Washington University, 1996.

Also available as:

Washington University Department of Computer Science technical report WUCS-96-24, September 1996.

Prepared by T. Paul McCartney (paul@cs.wustl.edu)

Washington University Department of Computer Science