Design strategies for scenario-based hypermedia: description of its structure, dynamics, and style

This paper describes design strategies for scenariobased hypermedia, which presents media composite nodes according to timed scripts. In order to translate an author’s story into timed scripts within a hypermedia framework, we present a design model with four different levels of scenario specifications. In these levels an author specifies details of 1) global structure described as the hierarchy of composite nodes with sequencing relationship between them, 2) detailed structure of a composite node described as a set of subnodes and navigation flow between them, 3) content specification of multimedia data, and 4) time and spatial presentation style of media data included in each node. Design strategies based on the model were applied to the authoring of a CD-ROM based English listening course for Japanese students. The design work was accomplished as a joint project with English teachers, and our scenario-based hypermedia system, Videobook, was used as the authoriug platform. This paper reports the details of the design strategies in each level and discusses how they made the authoring efficient while promoting the quality of the course.