• "As We May Think" Atlantic Monthly, June 1945.
• memex (memory extender).
• Read a couple excerpts ("web of trails")
• The MIT symposium in 1995 (Alan Kay, Doug Englebart, Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee, more)

Ted Nelson

• Attention Deficit Disorder
• Coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia"
• Docuverse
• Xanadu
• Transclusion: "system-maintained connections between instances which are the same in different contexts"

Bill Atkinson

• At Apple Computer
• Hypercard

Ben Shneiderman

• Describes Hyperties, a system he developed at U Maryland in late 80s -- a publication tool for hypermedia based on encyclopedia metaphor.
• Tables of contents, indices and hyperlinks were used to navigate browsing.
• Claims credit for developing concept of highlighted text link in 1983, as part of TIES (The Interactive Encyclopedia System), predecessor to Hyperties.
• The Hyperties Markup Language was developed by U Maryland industry partner as part of Hyperties too.
• With basis in SGML, it is said to closely resemble current HTML.

Tim Berners-Lee

• Formerly at CERN (now with MIT)
• Developer of WWW, HTTP, HTML

There are situations in which hypertext system is not appropriate, such as straight linear organization.

Since most writing is linear, conversion to (or authoring in) hypertext requires different way of thinking and organizing.
(or maybe just new way of organizing -- according to Bush, we already think this way!)

Initial page is entrance into hypertext system:

• Should answer user question:
  "Is there a high probability that the information I seek will be found here, and if so, how can I find it?"
• facilitate first part by including summary/TC. (table of contents)
• facilitate second part by TC/links to major concepts/search feature

1. know users and tasks
2. develop design concept around information structure, rather than around the technology
3. include personnel from diverse backgrounds (graphic artists, trainers, users, programmers)
4. Organize material into chunks (one theme/topic/idea per page)
5. Write article to refer to related articles, making references into links. Try not to have too few or too many links (2-20 is OK)
6. Make sure that navigation is simple and consistent
7. Design screen carefully : manage white space, minimize scrolling, useful links only, headings for guidance, clear attention focus.
8. Minimize STM burden. Allows focus on contents.

Some symptoms of poor hypertext design:

• too many links on a page,
• long link traversals needed to find relevant information,
• long articles,
• inadequate tables of contents,
• lack of overview

Criteria for WWW design and evaluation vary by:

• Owner’s identity.
  (web page goals/content within a category likely to be similar)
• Owner's goal, interpreted by designer
  (sell, inform, provide service, create discussion)
• Number of pages / amount of accessible info.
• Measure of success
  (hits, sales, usage time, user nationality)

To summarize its major points:

• WIMP paradigm (user control with all things visible) does not work in networked environment where there are billions of things.
• The "Anti-Mac" interface would address this, but how?
• Microsoft has developed NLP (natural language processor) and pumped it full of textual information.
• It will use NLP knowledge base to interpret web search requests and evaluate matches, to reduce the number of responses generated.

Interesting Excerpts from this article:

What are the implications of this new paradigm? Sacrifice of user control is obviously required.

• On the task side, you have information
• On the interface side, you have web site
• Decompose information into OA (objects and actions)
• . . . then map to UIOA through useful metaphor

Analyze task domain to yield objects, relationships, actions:

• ". . . have a clear definition of the atomic task objects, and the aggregates that can be combined to build the universe." (p 568)
• Aggregations include: lists, tables, trees, networks.
• Actions as well as objects can be aggregated
  (into options, macros, interaction sequences).

Metaphor selection/development is crucial and difficult:

• physical writing media as metaphor source
  (books, magazines, newspapers, etc)
• or physical embodiment (if any) of information and goals
  (mall with stores, museum with exhibits, etc).
• Need simple way for user to invoke an action
  (may be button, dialog box, menu, icon).

Last reviewed: 30 September 1998