Designing Hypermedia is a Collaborative Activity

Designing Hypermedia is a Collaborative Activity Norbert A. Streitz, GMD–IPSI, Darmstadt, Germany While approaches exist for designing hypermedia applications with respect to content, structure, and presentation [2], little attention has been paid to the actual process that individual designers incur (see Nanard and Nanard in this issue) or that groups undergo in collaborative design. Large and complex applications usually require a team of content providers, structure and value adding editors, scenario and script writers, graphic, layout and interface designers, etc. This sidebar focuses on two aspects of collaboration in a hypermedia design team: support for authors deciding jointly on content, structure and presentation; and group meeting support. The collaborative support we provide derives from investigating the cognitive and social aspects of both distributed cooperative authoring of complex hyperdocuments [4] and the face–to–face staff meetings of a hypermedia newspaper’s editorial team [3].