SmartMedia Tools: Bridging the Gap Between Generic Applications and Domain-Oriented Systems.

摘要

Our intuitions regarding the usability and utility of generic versus domain-specific applications may be too simplistic. Empirical studies indicate that professional practitioners need both: (1) the rich, flexible formatting and editing features associated with generic tools, and (2) the supportive functionality offered by domain-specific tools. The problem is that today's tools are either generic (and flexible) or domain-specific (and supportive), but not both. SmartMedia Tools change this situation by supporting practitioners to bridge this gap and work at different points along the flexibility/support continuum. SmartMedia Tools enable practitioners to begin with generic graphic elements and to gradually enrich SmartMedia with domain- specific vocabularies and relationships using graphical refinement, naming, prototype definition, and attribute refinement.