Exploration and guidance in media-rich information spaces : the implementation and realization of guided tours in digital dossiers

Confronted with media-rich information spaces involves interfaces that are usually designed to facilitate personal exploration to locate information of interest. Navigating such media-rich information spaces, where information structures can be complex, may result in disorientation and demotivation. The need of suited approaches able to support the exploration of such media-rich archives has motivated the development of several types of guided tours. The aims of these guided tours are to support information retrieval, like locating objects of interest in a logical sequential order, and analysis, like learning how to interact with real-life objects or detecting relationship structures, in a dense information environment. This paper, discusses the application and realization of these guided tours in digital dossiers in the domain of Cultural Heritage. Based on the results, we discuss the implications on future development of media-rich environments with regard to information exploration and guidance