ShareMe - a metaphor-based authoring tool for multimedia environments

This paper investigates requirements on tools for the authoring of multimedia information systems. These requirements can be divided into those of the authors who create the information system, and those of the users who interact with these environments. The goal of multimedia authoring tools is to allow the author easily build new information environments, which can subsequently support the user with a variety of interaction methods. It will be recommended that the design and implementation tasks of multimedia environments should be integrated within the authoring tool, and that both the author and users should be supported by the same appropriate user interface metaphors. The users' and authors' requirements are illustrated with the realisation of the system ShareME (Shared Multimedia Environments). It is argued that ShareME is a new type of authoring tool - a metaphor-based authoring tool - because it exploits real-world metaphors in the user interface to the multimedia environments .