THE INFORMATION-CONTENT AND USER DRIVEN ASPECTS OF THE ACT-IT MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING SYSTEM

Existing commercially available multimedia authoring tools support the multimedia author by facilitating the combination, co-ordination and presentation of different media types. The author is meant to develop the multimedia application with little intended constraint and to thei r best abilities. However, there are many areas in which the multimedi a author needs to be supported. These areas include explicit support f or the information content, the user, the presentation strategy, the i nterface design, and the aesthetic and creative aspects of the final a pplication. The ACT-IT project has addressed the wide scope of support required by a multimedia author and produced a prototype authoring fr amework of various solutions, using a user-centred perspective. Soluti ons developed include pre-defined templates, functional utilities, and a substantial information content, all of which aid the author, and u ltimately the application end user.