Abstract
When viewing a multimedia document on the web, 2 parameters comprise the user perception of the document: user satisfaction/enjoyment of the document and user assimilation/understanding of the information contained in the document. Existing communication architectures and protocols do not cater to the user's experience with multimedia. In this article we present a communication architecture based on microprotocols that adapt so as to maintain user perception even as the quality of the multimedia presentation degrades due to network congestion. We compare our protocols with 2 legacy protocols by testing real users for perception as the quality of the multimedia presentation deteriorates. Our results show that despite the overheads for adaptation, our protocol performed the best from a user's perspective. Our research shows that not only is it desirable but feasible to tailor communication architectures and protocols to the benefit of the user.