gIBIS: a hypertext tool for team design deliberation

This paper introduces an application-specific hypertext system designed to facilitate the capture of early design deliberations, which implements a specific design method called Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS). The hypertext system described here, gIBIS(for graphical IBIS), makes use of color and a high speed relational database server to facilitate building and browsing typed IBIS networks. Further, gIBIS is designed to support the collaborative construction of these networks by any number of cooperating team members spread across a local area network. Early experiments suggest that the gIBIS tool, while still incomplete, forges a good match between graphical interface and design method even in this experimental version.