Interactive Document Engineering

Institute for applied research in Visual Computing

© Fraunhofer IGD

Outline

The goal of the team's research and development work is to create solutions for the needs-based and context-related provision of documents − the right document just when it is needed − and the work with these documents.

The Interactive Document Engineering (IDE) competence center focuses its research and development work on the needs-based and context-related provision of and interaction with digital documents. The goal is to support people in selected working, learning, and life processes. New methods are being researched and developed to determine the needs of the user, select the right documents, adapt these suitably, and optimally support the user’s work with the documents.

This competence center and its work are involved in the important field of Visual Computing. The life cycle of digital documents and tools based on them also form the basis for the team's work, such as application-related embedding of research results in practice and interdisciplinary work of computer science, electrical engineering, education, didactics, and psychology. We employ usability engineering to ensure that our solutions can be used.

Current research topics in the competence center include, for example, electronic job performance support, workplace learning, user profiling, user behavior analysis, assistance systems and semantic analysis. The results of the research work are currently being applied in mechanical engineering, plant construction, the medical sector, banks, insurance companies, services, and shipbuilding.

Research Areas

The research work is part of the “generalized digital documents” research area. Modern digital media offer many new opportunities compared to traditional documents and pure text processing. With the help of new presentation and interaction technologies, such as augmented reality (AR), instructions from a maintenance manual can be superimposed directly and precisely onto a live view of the work environment. However, the creation of new technical documentation is not sufficiently supported by traditional authoring processes and tools, which makes it difficult to use them and increase their popularity. We are committed to this topic in our "Interactive Document Engineering" research area, where we are developing solutions for creating and visualizing completely new kinds of technical documents.

Properly interpreting complex and frequently inconsistent information is fundamental not only for work processes but also for learning, knowledge and production processes. Correct interpretation and the resulting logical action are based on a complete representation of all available relevant information as well as the relationships contained in it. Tools that automatically filter, link together, and visualize existing quantities of information can decisively contribute to supporting learning and work processes. In the "Interactive Document Engineering" research area, we work on concepts and tools for situational filtering, combination and provision and visualization of semantic information.

Business Fields

Today, digital multimedia documents have become indispensable in many application areas. Flexible work processes require rapid access to relevant information. Interactive document engineering supports needs-based and context-related provision of digital documents, effective document updating, and situation-based interaction with these documents. This not only entails taking into account different media types such as texts, images or videos but also of semantic information about the contents of these media and how they are created, changed, and used. Researchers at Fraunhofer IGD are developing new methods to determine the needs of the user, to select the right documents and document contents, to adapt them accordingly, and to optimally support work with the documents. Current areas of application for interactive document engineering include electronic job performance support as well as workplace learning and situational training.