| Abstract |
Guidelines and standards are gaining increasing importance worldwide, as they constitute a rapidly evolving medium for transferring established know-how and de facto knowledge to various interested parties. For instance, designers and developers, in various application domains, employ guidelines and standards in order to achieve consistency and user-friendliness of user-interfaces, especially in cases where complex and state-of-the-art technologies are employed. However, the process of developing such knowledge and the means for its appropriate dissemination and utilisation are still in a state of flux. For instance, several studies investigating the use of guidelines and standards by designers and developers have concluded that they are, for a number of reasons, frequently ignored. This thesis proposes a novel, portal-based approach for the development, dissemination and use of guidelines and standards. More specifically, the proposed approach concerns the establishment of a generic process for the development, use and subsequent maintenance of guidelines-related knowledge in various application domains taking into account the accumulated experience of people working on the development of IT products, representatives of the target market of these products and experts on guidance and standardisation. Furthermore, the appropriate exploitation of portals technology for the effective and efficient utilisation of the process is presented, analysing the employed methodology towards the design and development of a prototype portal structure to serve as an advanced, web-based environment for enabling (a) the cooperative development of guidelines and standards - at the knowledge developers site, and (b) the practical communication and use of guidelines and standards - at the knowledge consumers site. The practical exploitation of the concept in the form of a pilot portal for guidelines for Virtual Reality applications confirmed the hypothesis that the appropriate utilisation of portals technology can (a) provide the means for developing guidelines and standards building on a well defined process, (b) facilitate the efficient communication and use of the knowledge developed, and (c) ultimately serve as a bridge among knowledge developers and consumers and thereby contribute to the elimination of the demand -supply gap.
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Η τεχνολογία διαδικτυακών πυλών στην ανάπτυξη, διάχυση και χρήση οδηγιών σχεδίασης
