Tintin as interface

co-NEXuS

Luc Mertens
Public Library of Turnhout
bibliotheek@turnhout.be

In the co-NEXuS project, old-media experts (librarians, teachers, social workers…) and IT professionals collaborated with adults with little formal education to improve access to the Information Society for the public at large. More particularly, the project focused on how Internet technology could be re-designed in order to help local communities improve social cohesion.

The project involved intensive collaboration with both teachers and students in the field of adult education, who were seen as representative of a much larger group of computer-illiterate adults. This imposed severe design constraints, and the direct effect was that, due to their lack of user-friendliness, existing Internet interfaces had to be reconsidered from scratch. Another consequence was that the (3D) spatial metaphor, which still sustains most human-computer interaction, had to be replaced with a new paradigm.

co-NEXuS adopted the position that, rather than having the user navigate through electronic spaces, the information flow should be reversed and re-directed towards the user. To achieve this, an Agent-Like Device (ALD) was developed. The design of this device drew on heroes of mass culture, anchor men and women in the media, and avatars in electronic entertainment. In co-NEXuS the ALD becomes the interface, very much like its popular prototypes — Miss Marple, Tintin or Walter Cronkite. The ALD can be viewed as a know-all or a useful assistant who, on the basis of users’ profiles, intelligently attunes the information flow to the demands of the public, and connects users with users. Moreover, since it also operates as a toolbox, the ALD provides the user with direct and seamless access to current Internet tools.

co-NEXuS took the current fragmentation of local communities as its starting point. The challenge HCI now faces is to find appropriate means to enhance social cohesion in a highly individualised society. The ALD prototype produced by co-NEXuS under i3 already provides new (adult) computer users with an assistant to access the Information Society. In the near future co-NEXuS will further develop its integrated HCI approach (retrieval + communication + production); in particular, the project will concentrate on research into, and the development of, standards which will make the paradigm shift it introduces in HCI sustainable for larger and more complex electronic and public environments.

The co-NEXuS project finished on 31 October 1998.

Co-NEXuS web site: www.conexus.org/