Contextual Hypermedia in the Design Studio

The focus of this paper is on the development and use of hypermedia applications for the presentation of design studio projects, based upon the author's own recent experience of teaching CAD at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The contention of this paper is that this activity cannot be reduced to routine Hypercard stack development. Instead, the development of applications in this area need to give support to the expression of the design-theoretical issues that are central to the presentation of any design studio project, by exploiting the many issues of concern that are emerging from the field of human- computer interaction (HCI) The hypermedia application i.e. in this case design-theoretical views of a design project, will inevitably influence the specification of a user-interface, and hence the presentation and appearance of the design project. This paper will investigate the extent to which the interface can be separated out from the application and the converse issue namely, whether non-contextual hypermedia environments restrict design applications