Maxibook: User-centered Hypertext on an Ascii Terminal

The SuperBook TM1 browser (Remde, Gomez, Landauer, Eberhardt, and Lochbaum, 1987) was developed to provide users with improved online access to structured textual materials. It employs hypertext-like features in a graphical windowing environment to allow users to carry out search and browsing tasks. The MaxiBook project was carried out in order to make the features of the SuperBook browser available to people who do not have access to graphical display terminals. The successful creation of a robust and usable program involved three phases: prototyping in a windowing environment, prototyping in an ASCII terminal environment, and nal development. The second and central phase is the topic of this paper. 1 Motivation The information retrieval needs of Bellcore's owners and ongoing research in Cognitive Science came together in a system called the SuperBook TM browser (Remde, et al, 1987). This system was created to allow casual users to move through electronic documents and nd information at least as easily as they had with corresponding paper documents. The system has shown itself to be highly successful in behavioral experiments. Studies have revealed that people were able to use it to nd information more quickly and accurately than they could using paper (Egan, Remde, Gomez, Landauer, Eberhardt, and Lochbaum 1989). The work has generated interest within the Bell operating companies but surprisingly few wanted to attempt to put it into operation. One of the reasons was that the majority of the potential users have access to only ASCII terminals. Equipping users with graphical workstations is expensive. In addition, an organization may worry about abandoning its current systems and moving to something less well known and tested. By creating an ASCII terminal version of the SuperBook browser, we hoped to satisfy two goals. We wanted to respond to the needs of our owners by providing the functionality of the SuperBook browser to as many people as possible as soon as possible. In addition, we wanted to make it possible for our users to accumulate experience with their ASCII 1 SuperBook is a trademark of Bellcore.