Accessing guidelines information with Sierra

Guidelines for user interface design is one possible source for improving user interface usability, but manipulating guidelines manually or automatically induces two types of problems: problems which are intrinsic to guidelines themselves and problems which are originated by tools for working with guidelines. To overcome these shortcomings, a general model for systematically organizing guidelines is provided for presentation consistency. We explain how various existing and future guideline documents may fit into it and how various users may benefit from it. SIERRA, an implementation of this model, highlights that full hypertext, powerful search engine and support for multimedia are useful for supplying answers to specific questions when querying a guideline base.