HyperSenseÒ
Hypermedia Authoring for Training, Databases, Presentations, Prototyping and More

As a flexible multi-purpose tool, HyperSense will find a home on many workers' screens in the financial services and office automation communities.  The program can fill many niches not addressed by other products, or perform the duties of a standalone productivity tool.

HyperSense achieves its flexibility by combining facilities for handling text, graphics, and sound with the power of a user-accessible scripting language.  All with drag and drop simplicity.  The result is the ability to easily produce a wide range of interactive multimedia "documents" ranging from courseware to databases, and from presentations to complete applications.

Training / Tutorials
Perhaps the single biggest use of HyperSense in the corporate environment is for developing and deploying interactive training systems.  Each HyperSense document is both a repository for rich informational content, and a dynamic application, capable of interacting with the reader of the document.  This combination of static information (text, pictures, etc.) and interactive intelligence (in the form of built-in scripts) can convey information to a learner much more effectively than other media.

Tutorials developed in HyperSense offer a number of benefits to the corporation, including:
	· self-paced, self-directed learning Ð readers can steer their own path through the material presented, taking as much or little time with each topic as suits their individual needs
	· interactive instruction Ð the document can present different information to the reader based on their responses to questions or choices presented by the document
	· information gathering Ð the document can record reader choices and responses to provide feedback to the tutorial designer, to gather statistics on use of the tutorial, or to track and evaluate the progress of individuals
	· customized presentation Ð a single tutorial can present different information to different classes of readers.  For example, in addition to learning the steps a worker must follow to carry out a procedure, a manager may need additional information about how to deal with problem situations which can arise, and so forth.
	· adaptable Ð a tutorial may be easily modified at any time as processes and procedures change within the organization.

Databases

A HyperSense document can store both textual and graphic information in a flexible manner.  Text is stored in fields, as with a traditional flat-file database program, but each field may store any amount of text, and the number and layout of the fields may vary from page to page.  Creating a document which functions as a database is as easy as dragging the appropriate fields into place.  

Besides its flexibility, HyperSense's great advantage over a traditional database program again lies in the ability to add interactive intelligence in the form of scripts.  That is, in addition to the data which it contains, a document can also contain built-in procedures for sorting, searching, analyzing, reporting, and otherwise processing that data.

As one example, imagine a database which stores numerous standard paragraphs of text used in composing letters or legal contracts.  Each entry in the database has a field containing the rich text of one paragraph or section of text, and another field containing keywords for locating that paragraph.  Many common database management programs could construct and hold such a database, and provide means of searching for paragraphs by keywords and then copying the paragraphs for pasting into a word processor.

HyperSense takes you a giant step beyond simple file managers, by allowing scripts to be included with the database, turning it into a complete and easily customized application.  A HyperSense implementation of this database might, for example, do the following:
	· allow the user to locate and select the paragraphs for a document by clicking a button next to each desired paragraph;
	· prompt the user for missing information to fill in predefined blanks in those paragraphs (or automatically merge in that information from data in another file);
	· gather and number the selected paragraphs, and assemble them together with appropriate headings;
	· automatically write the completed document into a file on the disk; and
	· open that file in Edit or some other application for final proofing and editing, or print or fax it directly.

Presentations

HyperSense's inherent ability to handle multiple pages (or screens) full of graphic images, together with audio, makes it a natural for developing on-screen "slide-show" presentations.  The ability to use multiple layers of elements on each page makes it easy to create "add-on" overlay effects.  The presentation can take over the entire screen.  It can respond to mouse or keyboard events to trigger advancing to the next "slide", or timers may be used to create self-running presentations.

Customization, Prototyping and More

Everything you create in HyperSense, whether an instructional tutorial or presentation, a database application, or something unique to your own business needs, can be easily modified at any time.  New fields can be added to an existing database when the need arises, or the layout changed for greater ease of use.  New content can be incorporated into a presentation or tutorial.  And the underlying functionality provided by a document's scripts can be easily adapted to meet your company's changing needs.

The powerful yet understandable SenseTalk scripting language also makes HyperSense the perfect choice for rapid prototyping, front end development, and creating custom interfaces and utilities.  Any element of a document can be turned into a "tool" and placed on a palette ready to be dragged into another document, fully-scripted and ready to use.

SenseTalk itself is easily extended with new commands and functions written in Objective C.  These extensions are dynamically loaded when needed, and can be used to perform complex custom calculations, to access external databases or even to establish bidirectional communication with other applications.  The possibilities are endless.