Genre and Layout Design in Multimodal Documents:

Towards an Empirical Account

Pat Allen

University of East London

John Bateman

University of Bremen

Judy Delin

University of Stirling

AAAI Fall Symposium 1999

Overview

• Genre in Layout

• The Genre Space

• Approaching Genre Analysis: the Bird Book

• Conclusions and Future Directions

Genre in Layout

• Websites, magazines, instruction manuals, books, newspapers

• Clear generic constraints on how documents normally look: generate expectations for consumption strategies

Genre as Methodology

• Genre constraints intuitively understood but rarely articulated

• Genre description and comparison for accessing hidden assumptions about how documents look

The Genre Space

• Genre is conceived as sets of constraints on layout and function of graphical devices

• Radical extension of linguistic genre to include graphical expressions and practical constraints on their use (time, availability, cost)

• Genre as sets of intersecting, shifting and hybridising conventions, rather than discrete elements

• Possible then to ‘cross’ genres to generate new potential layouts, model cultural and historical shifts

The GeM Project

• Genre and Multimodality: A computer model of genre in document layout

• Designers advise on why their pages look the way they do: new sources of constraint (friction, news hierarchy, for example)

• Corpus of annotated documents using developing common layout description (Web, magazines, books, instructions, newspapers)

• Map out genre ‘space’ of parameters for description, test, modify, extend

• Tool for generating novel and existing layouts for evaluation by designers

Starting Points

• Typography and design

• Text generation

• Rhetorical structure theory

• Reichenberger et al’s (1996) ideas for generating layout, see also Bateman et al. (subm.)

Genre Analysis: Birds

Genre Analysis: Birds

Genre Analysis: Birds

Kinds of Information

• Direct observations

• Location, habitat

• Background information

Two Pages Compared: Information Features

Feature type Feature A1 Rendering A2 RenderingDirect Observation size: length DL I

appearance: adult T, P P, DL, Gappearance: sound DL DLsize: comparison T DLappearance: juvenile T DL, Gappearance: bill - DLappearance: when flying - DLlookalikes - DL

Location, Habitat distribution: type DL T, Pdistribution: geographical DL M, TSeaonal distribution DL IT

Background nesting DL TInformation how it feeds T T

eggs DL -what it eats DL, T -eggs: when, incubation - Tyoung: feeding, duration - T

Key: H header G graphic IT icon using table P picture DL data list I icon using quantity M map T text block

Two Pages Compared: Information Types and Rendering

Pg. Background Location, Habitat Direct Observation

A1 DL, T DL DL, G, P

A2 T M, IT, T, P DL, G, P, I

Genre Analysis: Birds

• Navigation

• Functional differentiation of zones

• Range of graphical resources (type, graphics, pictures)

• Allocation of graphical resources to information types

Genre Analysis: Birds

Observations

• Low degree of diversification in earlier text

• Redistribution of information across modalities in most recent text

• Greater graphical differentiation in most recent text

• Genre has shifted in terms of the utilisation of graphical resources

Conclusions

• Mapping from communicative function to graphical resource a useful framework for document comparison

• Mappings, functions, and resources will change with genre

• Generic comparisons arrived at through same process with corpus of different document genres

• Possible to chart genre shifts across time and cultures

Future Directions

• Next steps: corpus collection and framework extension, annotation, principles for communicative function-graphical resource mappings

• Implementation of GeM layout tool that enables exploration of different document appearances across genres

• Planned extension to compare document appearances culturally and historically