Designing User Interfaces for Hypermedia (Research Reports Esprit / Project 6532.HIFI)

This book is devoted to the question of how to design and develop, maintain, and use a hypermedia interface. It is based on a workshop on methodological issues of the design of hypertext-based user interfaces held in July 1993 in Darmstadt, Germany, as part of the ESPRIT project HIFI (Hypertext Interface For Information: Multimedia and Relational Databases). The contributions have been thoroughly revised and enlarged as well as harmonized for the book. Four broad topics are discussed: foundations of hypermedia design, metaphors for hypermedia interfaces, evaluation of approaches and products, and detailed design proposals for the interface artefact and guidelines. The methodological approach is demonstrated by two prototypical hypermedia applications (for banks and for hospitals).