WORKSHOP ON INCORPORATING HYPERTEXT FUNCTIONALITY INTO SOFTWARE SYSTEMS in conjunction with the European Conference on Hypermedia Technologies (ECHT'94) Edinburgh, Scotland, September 18-23 1994 POSITION PAPER DEADLINE: July 25, 1994 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Please Distribute this Call for Participation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- WORKSHOP THEME Most end-users are reluctant to abandon their current non-hypertext oriented systems in favor of systems providing hypertext functionality. Most system developers do not have an adequate working knowledge of hypertext and hypermedia to augment currently used systems. If the majority of users are going to benefit from hypertext functionality, it must be incorporated within the everyday information systems they use with a minimal amount of effort by designers and developers. Thus, as a field, we must look towards augmenting with hypertext functionality the myriad of today's personal, scientific and business systems, which were not designed specifically as hypertext oriented. This should result in new ways to view a system's knowledge and processes conceptually, to navigate among items of interest and analysis stages, to enhance system knowledge with comments and relationships, and to target information displays to individual users and their tasks. This workshop focuses on hypertext and hypermedia as value-added "support" functionality, and the entire process of embedding hypertext functions into non-hypertext oriented information systems. These include a large base of scientific and business applications that people use primarily for their underlying analytic functionality, i.e., not for reading or navigating among large amounts of display information. Hypertext features both supplement and give users access to the application's primary activities. For many of these systems, hypertext will be integrated so seamlessly that users will be unaware of its presence. ISSUES During the workshop we (the organizers and participants) shall discuss the following issues: I. Hypertext as Support Functionality What does hypertext and hypermedia value-added support functionality imply? For many, hypertext comprises simply links and forward navigation. Yet we know that hypertext, as a concept, has much more to offer---annotation, backtracking, guided tours, overviews, etc. Which benefits could organizations, groups and individual users derive from the various hypertext features? Which hypertext features best would augment different kinds of information systems? Can we prescribe a minimal level of hypertext functionality for any application? II. Incorporating Hypertext Support Features How can hypertext and hypermedia support features successfully be embedded in applications? What challenges do designers, developers and users, as well as the organizations and management that sponsor these efforts, face? III. Retrofitting Existing Applications We must consider the huge existing base of personal, scientific and business applications. How can designers and developers enhance these existing non-hypertext systems with hypertext functionality? What challenges do designers, developers and users, as well as the organizations and management that sponsor these efforts, face? IV. Fostering Widespread Acceptance of Hypertext If hypertext functionality is not incorporated into everyday applications, people will not benefit from it. How best can we encourage designers and developers to take full advantage of hypertext concepts? How can markets for the wide-spread incorporation of hypertext functionality be opened? Isakowitz, for example, suggests targeting hypermedia support towards decision-making domains that face high uncertainty and equivocality, as well as towards systems supporting organizational information repositories [HICSS'93]. WHO SHOULD ATTEND A wide audience of researchers and academicians should find this workshop valuable. The topic is important for designers and developers, as well as anyone concerned with the ability of hypermedia to penetrate and proliferate beyond the limited domains that today's systems reach. WORKSHOP SCHEDULE The workshop is primarily discussion-oriented. To promote interaction and participation by everyone, we shall limit attendance to 20 participants. The following schedule should be flexible enough to accommodate other interests of the participants, as long as these do not detract from covering the most important issues in depth. 9:00 Introduction to the workshop; introduce each participant 9:45 Issue I: Hypertext as support functionality 10:30 Coffee break 10:45 Issue 2: Incorporating hypertext support features 12:30 Lunch break 14:00 Issue 3: Retrofitting existing applications 15:45 Coffee break 16:00 Issue 4: Fostering widespread acceptance of hypertext 17:00 Future research directions 17:30 Workshop close HOW TO PARTICIPATE Please email your position paper to both conference organizers by July 25, 1994. The paper should be two-three pages and in ASCII or postscript format. Please include your full mailing address and email address, as well as telephone and fax numbers. We shall select participants based on how well their backgrounds, interests and experiences pertain to the workshop themes. It is very important to us that each participant be able to contribute to the discussion. We shall select the participants by July 29, 1994. We shall distribute the position statements of the participants. As preparation for the workshop, all participants will be expected to read each position statement. We also shall send each participant a survey for suggesting additional discussion topics. We shall distribute a final agenda in early September. We shall publish the position papers in NJIT's technical report series, available on paper and electronically. WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS Michael Bieber New Jersey Institute of Technology Computer and Information Sciences Department Newark, NJ 07102-1982 USA email: bieber@cis.njit.edu June and July tel: +1 (301) 286-5673 fax: +1 (301) 286-1768 Permanent: tel: +1 (201) 596-2681 fax: +1 (201) 596-5777 Harri Oinas-Kukkonen University of Oulu Department of Information Processing Science Linnanmaa, FIN-90570 Oulu, Finland email: hok@rieska.oulu.fi tel: +358 (81) 553 1900 fax: +358 (81) 553 1890