Authoring intelligent multimedia applications: finding familiar representations for expressing knowledge

Examines some of the reasons why the task of developing intelligent multimedia applications is so complex. The authors describe some ideas being explored in an effort to reduce the complexity of this software development task. There are significant barrier preventing nonprogrammers or occasional programmers from rapidly prototyping intelligent multimedia applications. A perspective is presented on why this barrier exists and how the barrier might be overcome. Two prototypes of task-specific knowledge acquisition minitools are discussed. The first minitool presents a way nonprogrammers might author a knowledge base that allows a spatial structure to be browsed. The second minitool presents a way occasional programmers might author troubleshooting procedures for a device. The minitools provide domain experts with representations (i.e., spatial maps and decision trees) that are more familiar than frames and rules