Industrial strength hypermedia: requirements for a large engineering enterprise

Current hypermedia tools do not support the needs of collaborative work groups in distributed heterogeneous environments and cannot be integrated into the existing and planned computing environments at large enterprises like Boeing. It is in meeting these needs, however, that hypermedia could make its greatest impact. Hypermedia systems must evolve beyond their current standalone status into a technology that is truly integrative. We use a description of some current hypermedia projecs and a representative future scenario to help identify technical requirements and strategies for developing and deploying hypermedia that is of sufficient “industrial strength” to support a large engineering enterprise. This paper is addressed to hypermedia researchers and developers as well as to our colleagues in other business and engineering organizations. The intent of this paper is to remind both the research and development communities of the urgent, “real-world needs that exist and to encourage dialogue between the two worlds.

[1]  Clarence A. Ellis,et al.  Groupware: some issues and experiences , 1991, CACM.

[2]  Elfriede F. Hofer,et al.  Hypermedia as communication and prototyping tools in the concurrent design of commercial airplane products , 1990, INTERACT.

[3]  C. J. Kacmar,et al.  A process-oriented extensible hypertext architecture , 1989, SGCH.

[4]  W. Anthony Mason.  Distributed Processing: The State of the Art , 1987 .

[5]  G. W. Furnas,et al.  Generalized fisheye views , 1986, CHI '86.

[6]  R. I. Winner,et al.  The Role of Concurrent Engineering in Weapons System Acquisition , 1988 .

[7]  Daniel G. Bobrow,et al.  Beyond the chalkboard: computer support for collaboration and problem solving in meetings , 1988, CACM.

[8]  Douglas Schuler,et al.  Participatory Design: Principles and Practices , 1993 .

[9]  Mitchell Kapor,et al.  Agenda: a personal information manager , 1990, CACM.

[10]  Norman K. Meyrowitz.  Hypertext—does it reduce cholesterol, too? , 1991 .

[11]  Julie A. Launhardt,et al.  Hypermedia Templates: an author's tool , 1991, HYPERTEXT '91.

[12]  Amy Pearl,et al.  Sun's Link Service: a protocol for open linking , 1989, Hypertext.

[13]  Daniel M. Russell,et al.  Facilitating the development of representations in hypertext with IDE , 1989, Hypertext.

[14]  Michael L. Begeman,et al.  gIBIS: a hypertext tool for exploratory policy discussion , 1988, CSCW '88.

[15]  Nicole Yankelovich,et al.  Context and orientation in hypermedia networks , 1989, TOIS.