Evaluating hypertext usability

The overall acceptability of a computer system is a combination of its social acceptability and practical acceptability. As an example of social acceptability of hypertext systems, consider the French LYRE system [1] for teaching poetry. LYRE allows the students to see the poem from various “viewpoints”, each highlighting certain parts of the poem as hypertext anchors to relevant annotations and allowing the student to add new annotations. LYRE does not, however, allow the student to add new viewpoints since that capability is reserved for the teacher. The premise is that students should work within the framework set up by the teacher and not construct completely new ways to analyze the poem. This is obviously socially acceptable in the Southern European tradition in France, and indeed an alternative design might well have been deemed socially unacceptable in that country because it would have undermined the teacher’s authority. On the other hand, many people in Denmark, where Scandinavian attitudes are more prevalent, would view the current design of LYRE as socially unacceptable because it limits the students’ potential for independent discovery.