Table Of ContentResearch Reports ESPRIT
Project 6532 . HI FI . Volume 1
Edited in cooperation with the European Commission
w.
Schuler J. Hannemann
N. Streitz (Eds.)
Designing User Interfaces
for Hypermedia
Springer
Volume Editors
Wolfgang Schuler
Norbert Streitz
Gesellschaft fOr Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH
Dolivostr. 15, 0-64293 Darmstadt, Germany
Jorg Hannemann
empirica GmbH
Oxfordstr. 2, 0-53111 Bonn, Germany
ESPRIT Project 6532, HIFI (Hypertext Interface for Information: Multimedia
and Relational Databases), belongs to the Software and Advanced
Information Processing sector of the ESPRIT Programme (European
Specific Programme for Research and Development in Information
Technologies) supported by the European Commission.
The aim of ESPRIT Project 6532, HIFI, was to create a set of tools to allow
a reader to access, via a hypertext interface, a large body of information
managed by external (possibly pre-existing) databases, either relational
or multimedia. Methodologies to support the hypertext interface
development process are also being investigated.
For three different real-life applications (for banks, hospitals and museums)
prototypes have been developed and tested. The applications and the set
of the HIFI tools have been fully specified and designed.
Partners in the project were:
Benaki Museum, Athens (Greece); Epsilon Software AG, Athens (Greece); GMD-IPSI,
Darmstadt (Germany); Music/Forth, Chania (Greece); Politecnico di Milano, Milan (Italy);
Siemens AG, Munich (Germany); Systems & Management SpA, Milan-Turin (Italy); Syntax
Sistemi Software SpA, (Olivetti), Bari (Italy).
ISBN-13: 978-3-540-58489-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-45743-2
001: 10.1007/978-3-642-45743-2
CIP-Data applied for.
CR Subject Classification (1991): 1.7.2, H.5.1, H.1.2, J.1
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York
Publication No. EUR 16105 EN of the
European Commission,
Dissemination of SCientific and Technical Knowledge Unit,
Directorate-General Information Telecommunications, Information Market and
Exploitation of Research,
Luxembourg.
© ECSC-EC-EAEC, Brussels-Luxembourg, 1995
LEGAL NOTICE
Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf
of the Commission Is responsible for the use which might be made
of the following information.
Typesetting: Camera-ready by the editors
SPIN: 10480846 45/3140-543210 - Printed on acid-free paper
Preface
One can observe that a wide range of human activities involves various forms of de
sign. Especially if the goal implies the creation of an artifact, design is at the very
center of these activities. It is the general understanding in the public to place design
especially in the context of, for example, fashion, furniture, household items, cars,
and architecture or in a more general way at the intersection of art and engineering.
Of course, in the field of information technology, developers of software and hard
ware are called system 'designers'. Design can be identified and considered in the
context of many activities related to pUblishing: creating a product ad in a magazine,
designing the layout of a newspaper, authoring a book. Summarizing these exam
ples as 'creating documents', these are activities where two challenges with respect
to design have to be met. Designing the content, its structure, and its relationship
to the existing knowledge of potential readers is one, while the other refers to the
'rhetorical' aspects including designing the presentation of the material in order to
communicate the content. Publishing is communicating knowledge.
Once these documents take the form of electronic documents, the original chal
lenges are extended by additional dimensions caused by the availability of new
means for content creation, structuring, and presentation. The results of these activi
ties in terms of interactive electronic documents exist only 'in' the computer - at
least with respect to the full range of their functionality - and are 'read' via user-in
terfaces created by special user-interface designers. Hypertext and hypermedia doc
uments are prominent examples of these challenges. While the concept of "hyper
text" with its emphasis on non-linearity provides new opportunities with respect to
structuring the information, the rapid spread of multimedia technology allows also
the creation and presentation of time-dependent data (e.g., audio and video) to be
used as content thus going beyond text and pictures. These new opportunities and
challenges with respect to structure and content characterize the design of Hyper
media = Hypertext + Multimedia. The task of designing user-interfaces for hyper
media is a crucial aspect of the creation of any but especially of large hypermedia
applications in the real world. This is the topic of this book and reflected in the title:
Designing User Intelfacesfor Hypermedia.
While the design of user-interfaces for interactive computer systems in general
is difficult because it is usually an ill-defined problem with specifications which are
never sufficient, the design of large hypermedia applications is an especially com
plex task. There are no design principles readily available which can be applied in
a straight forward fashion. Due to the lack of a sufficient theoretical basis, a method-
VI Preface
ology for the design of hypertext and hypermedia has to be developed which can
be used to guide the construction of specific hypermedia interfaces and applica
tions. In order to address the above issues in a systematic way, we organized a Work
shop on Methodological Issues on the Design of Hypertext-based User lnteifaces
which was held at GMD-IPSI in Darmstadt, Germany, on July 13-14, 1993. This
workshop was part of our contributions in the ESPRIT project 6532 HIFI (Hypertext
Interface For Information: Multimedia and Relational Databases). Details on the
HIFI project are described at the end of this book (see section 5). The call for con
tributions to the workshop invited papers and participants to address the following
topics:
- Design and construction process of hypertext/hypermedia-based interfaces
- Design proposals for the interface artefact
- Evaluation concepts and methods for hypermedia user interfaces
- Experiences with specific applications and practice reports.
These topics were selected to discuss quite a range of questions. Examples are:
Which framework for the hypermedia interface design process has been or should
be used: theory or model-based approach, or a task-artefact cycle framework?
Which specific design methods have been or should be used: argumentative design,
design rationale method, participatory design, rapid prototyping, human acitivity
approach, traditional requirements and constraints analysis, scenario building?
Which are suggestive models for hypermedia user interfaces? What kind of meta
phors are useful? How useful are handbooks and guidelines for 'traditional' user in
terfaces? Which specific design decisions have improved the comprehensibility of
hypermedia applications? In which way is it necessary to revise design decisions
when an application grows larger and becomes more complex (scaling)? Which
evaluation approaches have been or should be used? What are the specifics of eva
luating the usability of hypermedia interfaces? Of course, the workshop did not pro
vide definite answers to all these, in some cases very fundamental, questions. But
that was not our expectation, either. Rather, the workshop proved to be a highly stim
ulating and effective forum for the exchange of ideas and practical experiences, for
the discussion, critique, and combination of proposals for concrete designs as well
as for methodological considerations.
Encouraged by the success of the workshop and the feedback, there was the feel
ing that the results of this workshop should be disseminated to a larger audience out
side the workshop participants. Although there were already proceedings distrib
uted on site at the workshop - containing working papers of the talks, descriptions
of projects, and system demonstrations - to publish a book on the workshop required
substantial revisions and reorganization of the material. One important aspect was
that the revised contributions should reflect also the discussion and feedback re
ceived during the workshop. In addition, some contributions had to be regrouped
according to the experience of new relationships discovered during the workshop.
In order to achieve a high quality book, all authors were asked to reorganize, elabo
rate, and.edit their initial contributions. These 'value-added' papers were again re
viewed by the session chairs of the workshop. Based on this feedback, authors had
to revise their papers a second time around before they were accepted for publica-
Preface VII
tion. In addition, each set of papers constituting one of the five sections of this book
is introduced by general comments and a characterization of each paper pointing
at the relationships of these papers.
The new organization of the book resulted in five sections:
I Foundations of Hypermedia Design
2 Metaphors for Hypermedia Interfaces
3 Evaluation and Critical Aspects of Hypermedia Design
4 Detailed Design Proposals and Guidelines
5 The ESPRIT Project HIFI.
Looking at the final version of this book, we think that the result justifies the addi
tional effort which everybody put into the revision process. We like to thank all con
tributors for following the recommendations of the reviewers to a high degree, the
reviewers for taking the time to comment and provide valuable feedback and recom
mendations, the section editors for their thoughtful introductions and summaries of
the papers providing a comprehensive perspective. In addition, we want to acknowl
edge the patience and organizational support of Mrs. Ingeborg Mayer from Springer
Verlag, Heidelberg and the technical support ofUwe Pechel from GMD-IPSI in pre
paring the camera-ready copy. Finally, we hope that you, the readers, enjoy this
book and have a chance to participate in this exchange of ideas and proposals.
Darmstadt, October 1994 Wolfgang Schuler, Jorg Hannemann, Norbert Streitz
Table of Contents
1 Foundations of Hypermedia Design 1
Introduction and Overview
Norbert A. Streitz
Hypennedia application design: a structured approach 5
Franca Garzotto, Luca Mainetti, Paolo Paolini
Experiences in authoring hypennedia: creating better presentations 18
Lynda Hardman
What matters in developing interfaces for hyperdocument presentation? 29
lorg Hannemann, Manfred ThUring
Interaction in hypennedia systems: from browsing to conversation 43
Ulrich Thiel
2 Metaphors for Hypermedia Interfaces 55
Introduction and Overview 55
Ulrich Glowalla
Metaphor engineering: a participatory approach 58
Matthias Rauterberg, Markus Hof
Metaphor-based user interfaces for hyperspaces 68
Kaisa V iiiiniinen
Architecture and user interface of the IDEAS intelligent 79
documentation system
Andreas Birk, Bidjan Tschaitschian, Franz Schmalhofer,
Manfred ThUring, Heiner Gertzen
X Table of Contents
3 Evaluation and Critical Aspects of
Hypermedia Design 95
Introduction and Overview 95
Manfred Thiiring
An evaluation model based on experimental methods applied to the
design of hypennedia user interfaces 99
Ulrich Glowalla, Joachim Hasebrook
Never mind the theory, feel the data: Observations on the 117
methodological problems of user interface design
Andrew Dillon, Cliff McKnight
Design of hypennedia interfaces in commercial applications 126
Martin Hofmann, Ulrich Glowalla
4 Detailed Design Proposals and Guidelines 139
Introduction and Overview 139
Paul Kahn
A dialogue approach to graphical infonnation access 141
Thomas Kamps, Klaus Reichenberger
Annotations are not 'for free':
The need for runtime layer support in hypertext engines 156
Christine M. Neuwirth, Ravinder Chandhok, David S. Kaufer,
James H. Morris, Paul Erion, Dale ¥iller
Three fundamental elements of visual rhetoric in hypertext 167
Paul Kahn, Ronnie Peters, George P. Landow
Some issues of defining a user interface with general purpose 179
hypennedia toolkits
Thomas Kirste
Analysis of feature usage in access to on-line infonnation 201
TomT. Carey
Facing technical documentation with hypertext: reflections on the 208
systematic design, construction and presentation
Klaus Meusel, Klaus Eickemeyer, Thomas Koslowski
Table of Contents XI
5 The ESPRIT Project HIFI 219
HIFI - Hypertext interface to external databases 219
Umberto Cavallaro
The ESPRIT project HIFI medical application 225
Karin Hertwig
HIFINBIPOP - Hypertext Interface to FINancial data in BIPOP bank (Italy) 236
Umberto Cavallaro, Marco Tentori
Appendix: Addresses of the Authors 247
