Methodologies in tightly and loosely coupled dynamic information ecologies

Network-accessible multimedia repositories are proliferating at a rapid rate, providing the potential for people to access a wide variety of distributed and dynamic information resources. This shift from traditionally closed systems (such as books and CD-ROMs) to open systems (such as the WWW) has resulted in the locus of control moving away from designers towards users. Supporting interaction in these open systems, I argue, requires new approaches based on both bottom-up and top-down methods of design and analyses. Using two case studies, a method for each approach is presented. I conclude with a discussion of the implications for the design of networked, interactive multimedia.