NoteCards is a general hypermedia environment designed to help people work with ideas. Its intended users are authors, designers, and other intellectual laborers engaged in analyzing information, designing artifacts, and generally processing ideas. The system provides these users with a variety of hypermedia-based tools for collecting, representing, managing, interrelating, and communicating ideas. This paper presents the NoteCards system as a foil against which to explore some of the major limitations of the current generation of hypermedia systems. In doing so, this paper highlights seven of the major issues that must be addressed in the next generation of hypermedia systems. These seven issues are: search and query, composite nodes, virtual structures, computational engines, versioning, collaborative work, and tailorability. For each of these issues, the papers describes the limitations inherent in NoteCards and the prospects for doing improving the situation in future systems.

A design rationale (DR) is a representation of the reasoning behind the design of an artifact. In recent years, the use of semiformal notations for structuring arguments about design decisions has attracted much interest within the human-computer interaction and software engineering communities, leading to a number of DR notations and support environments. This paper examines two foundational claims made by argumentation-based DR approaches: that expressing DR as argumentation is useful, and that designers can use such notations. The conceptual and empirical basis for these claims is examined, firstly by surveying relevant literature on the use of argumentation in non-design contexts (from which current DR efforts draw much inspiration), and secondly, by surveying DR work. Evidence is classified according to the research contribution it makes, the kind of data on which claims are based (anecdotal or experimental), the extent to which the claims made are substantiated, and whether or not the users of the approach were also the researchers. In the survey, a trend towards tightly integrating DR with other design representations is noted, but it is argued that taken too far, this may result in the loss of the original vision of argumentative

Hypertext systems have traditionally focused on information management and presentation. In contrast, the Aquanet hypertext system described in this paper is designed to support knowledge structuring tasks. Aquanet is a browser-based tool that allows users to graphically represent information in order to explore its structure. In this paper, we discuss our motivations for developing Aquanet. We then describe the basic concepts underlying the tool and give an overview of the user interface. We close with some brief comments about our initial experiences with the tool in use and some of the directions we see the Aquanet research moving in the near future. from Hypertext `91 Proceedings, San Antonio, Texas, December 15-18, 1991 Draft of: August 28, 1991 10:21 am 1 Aquanet: a hypertext tool to hold your knowledge in place 1 1.

This paper discusses experiences and lessons learned from the design of an open hypermedia system, one that integrates applications and data not "owned " by the hypermedia. The Dexter Hypertext Reference Model [8] was used as the basis for the design. Though our experiences were generally positive, we found the model constraining in certain ways and underdeveloped in others. For instance, Dexter argues against dangling links, but we found several situations where permitting and supporting dangling links was advisable. In Dexter, the data objects making up a component's contents are encapsulated in the component; in practice, references to objects stored apart from the hypermedia structure should be allowed. We elaborate Dexter's notion of composite component to include composites that "contain " other components and composites with structured contents, among others. The paper also includes a critique of Dexter's notion of link directionality, proposes a distinction between marked and unmarked anchors, and discusses anchoring within a composite.

The concept of a path, or ordered traversal of some links in a hypertext, has been a part of the hypertext notion from its early formation. Although paths can help to solve two major problems with hypertext systems, namely user disorientation and high cognitive overhead for users, their value has not been recognized. Paths can also provide the backbone for computations over a hypertext, an important issue for the future of hypertext. This paper constructs a framework for understanding path mechanisms for hypertext and explores the basic issues surrounding them. Given this framework, it reviews path mechanisms that have been provided by other hypertext systems. Finally, it describes the Scripted Documents system, which has been developed to test the potential of one powerful path mechanism. 1. Introduction Hypertext is a valuable contribution to the information age, allowing readers to access related information through machine-supported links. However, current hypertext systems have se...

Hypertexts may be implicitly structured, based on either node content or context. In this paper, we examine implicit structures that rely on the interpretation of node’s spatial context. Hypertext authors and readers can perceive and understand these idiosyncratic structures, but, because they are implicit, they cannot be used by the system to support users ’ activities. We have explored spatially structured hypertext authored in three different systems, and have developed heuristic recognition algorithms based on the results of our analyses of the kinds of structures that people build. Our results indicate that (1) recognition of implicit structures in spatial hypertext is feasible, (2) interaction will be important in guiding such recognition, and (3) the hypertext system can provide layout facilities that will render later systematic interpretation much easier. Found structures can be used as a basis for supporting information management, as a straightforward way of promoting knowledge-base evolution, as a way of solving representational problems endemic to many hypertext systems, or as a basis for collaboration or interaction.

Aquanet is a collaborative hypertext tool that combines elements of frame-based knowledge representation and graphical presentation. In this paper, we examine the first major application of the tool in an analysis task, a two year long technology assessment that resulted in almost 2000 nodes and more than 20 representational types. First, we cover the implications of the representational resources provided and representational decisions that were made. Then we discuss how spatial layout was used in lieu of the complex relations Aquanet’s data model supports. Finally, we show how distinct regions emerged to reflect particular activities and how they were subsequently used as the basis for a later collaboration on a similar task.

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Hypertext research in the mid-1980s on representing argumentation for design rationale (DR) foreshadowed what are now dominant concerns in knowledge management: representing, codifying and manipulating semiformal concepts, the use of formalisms to mediate collective sensemaking, and the construction of group memory. With the benefit of 15 years ’ hindsight, we can see the failure of so many hypertext DR systems to be adopted as symptomatic of the more general problem of fostering ‘hypertext literacy’ in real working environments. Pursuing Englebart’s goal of “augmenting human intellect”, we describe the Compendium approach to collective sensemaking, which demonstrates the impact that a hypertext facilitator can have on the learning and adoption problems that plagued earlier hypertext systems. We also describe how conventional documents and modelling notations can be morphed into and out of Compendium’s ‘native hypertext’ in order to support other modes of working across diverse communities of practice.

Hypermedia is often viewed as either a paradigm for human-computer interaction or information organization. Human-computer interaction provides a view of hypermedia that involves the creation, manipulation, and access of information through a "point-and-click" navigation mechanism. Information organization provides a view of hypermedia that involves the storage of information as a set of data and metadata objects, where metadata objects capture structural relationships among information objects. This paper describes a third view of hypermedia --- hypermedia as a computing paradigm. In this paper, we explore the implications of pushing hypermedia beyond its traditional role in human-computer interaction and information organization into the computer's core operating environment. We believe the resulting hypermedia operating systems provide a new paradigm for computing --- one in which human-computer interaction, information storage and retrieval, programming, and control are integrated ...