Multimedia in advanced telecommunications services

This thesis investigates the multimedia in advanced telecommunications services. The advanced telecommunications services refer to the Universal Personal Telecommunication (UPT) services which are currently under research at the University of Wollongong. A prototype of the user interface was developed incorporating UPT features that are relevant from a UPT user's point of view. Mobihty in time, space, and media is discussed that allows a UPT user a high degree of personal freedom. Facsimile, email, video conferencing, and phone are modes of communication that are explored. Providing all of these modes on a user's terminal increases the user's communication capability drastically and give mobility in media. The UPT Diary enables the user to communicate in a time independent fashion. Designing a good user interface is a difficult task. Good design principles that have been proposed by researchers in the field were taken into consideration at design stage. The user interfaces were later evaluated using some of the accepted design principles.