What are GUIs good for? Constructing and controlling multimedia information

Information systems that are able to store and deliver various combinations of textual, pictorial and audio material in electronic form have come to be known as multimedia systems. Within such systems graphical user interfaces (and the metaphors that they embed) play a number of important roles. The authors have designed and produced an interactive multimedia presentation system (called IMPS) based upon the extensive use of GUIs. The intent of the system was to provide an environment that would enable people without any technical programming ability to create interactive multimedia presentations for delivery using a multimedia personal computer (MPC) system. The authors outline the basic design of the IMPS tool and the approaches that have been used to evaluate it in terms of the quality of its graphical user interfaces and the acceptability of the multimedia products that it can be used to create