Teledemocracy by Ytterstad, Akselsen, Svendsen, and Watson

Design	A system specification was developed using the following inputs: the characteristics of local political work; a list of identified needs that telecommunication technology could potentially satisfy; relevant state of the art technology.
Functional specification	Computer supported telephony Computer supported telephony, in this paper, describes the use of information technology to establish telephone connections and multi-party telephone conferences. In other contexts, this term includes integration of computers and PBXs (Walters, 1993) or the utilization of information supplied by the network (e.g., McNinch, 1990). Computer supported telephony was chosen because the telephone is already extensively used. Furthermore, the survey indicated a need for coordination of meeting activities and tools for supporting one-to-many interactions. Combined with the knowledge that communication takes place within small groups, these observations support additional telephone conferencing functionality.
	Electronic messaging The asynchronous relationship between the politicians' and the administration's working hours (see Figure 5) and the general problem of availability calls for a method of storing and forwarding messages. Such functionality also allows for quick and simple distribution of messages, papers, and meeting schedules. It also caters to the need to interact with an array of communication partners. Additional functionality Additional functionality was included to meet other identified needs. An electronic directory service is essential to supporting basic communication functions. In addition, because politicians prepare considerable written material, they need tools for composing and managing electronic documents. Furthermore, documents should be easily attached to electronic messages.
Technology platform	Selection of the technology platform, as with most projects, was constrained: The only existing network technology for telephony in Salangen upon initiation of the project was analog Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) was introduced in late 1994. The technology had to be available, reliable, relatively cheap, and widespread or expected to be so in the near future. Based on these criteria, the following configuration was chosen (see Figure 7): IBM compatible PC with Microsoft Windows operating system high speed dial-up modem in parallel with an analog telephone local printer.
Figure 7. Equipment configuration
The user interface	Local politicians, like most of the population, have highly diverse backgrounds and widely differing computer experience. As a result, the provided software had to meet specific criteria: be readily usable by the least experienced computer user; meet the specific needs of local politicians; seamlessly integrate the provided functions. A thorough survey of available products revealed that no existing applications satisfied the preceding requirements. Thus, we decided to design a customized system in conformance with the stated criteria. The system is referred to as POT - "The politicians' channel in the telecommunications network". Principal solution Many applications using an operating system with a graphical user interface (e.g., MS Windows) typically present several windows each providing a portion of the total functionality. This is confusing to many inexperienced users and can represent a major obstacle to effective use of the technology. This is even more apparent in an environment where several applications are running at the same time. We therefore decided to provide only one screen that gave access to all the system's major functions. As a consequence, the system completely integrates all communication capabilities and uses a common electronic directory, including telephone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. For establishing a communication session, three basic elements are identified: the communication partners - who the means of communication - how the information to be communicated - what. Following the gestalt psychological principle that all elements in a problem situation should be present in the perceptual field (Koffka, 1935), we have chosen to design the main screen as seen in Figure 8.
Figure 8. The main screen.
	The graphical directory Traditionally, directories have been organized as flat lists (e.g., paper-based telephone directories), and this principle is often followed in computer systems as well. As well as supporting the familiar, linear searching of alphabetic lists, POT supports string-based search criteria. A key design goal was to create an interface that gives an "illusion of proximity" to communication partners. This illusion can be achieved if the presentation of the directory fosters associations with the user's communication patterns. The user may navigate in this graphical environment accessing records through links to the directory base, see Figure 9. The graphical directory, as well as including telephone numbers, fax numbers and e-mail addresses, gives a pictorial representation of the user's communication partners. Thus, the graphical directory may be seen as a sensitive map, from which "drag'n'drop" operations of selected items (i.e., one single or a group of communication partners) constitute the specification of address information needed to set up a communication session.
Figure 9. The Graphical Directory
	People recall information that is coded both verbally and pictorially faster and more easily than information that is not coded in this fashion (Paivio, 1971; 1986). This observation provides additional support for presenting the directory graphically. Document handler In order to provide for easy handling of messages and documents, an integrated document handler was implemented. The document handler gives a graphical overview of catalogs and files, and it allows for basic administrative functions such as creating, moving, copying, and retrieving (much like Window's Filemanager). POT includes no special file system (i.e., folders) for electronic messages. Thus, attachments to electronic messages can be included from and stored in the file system directly through "drag'n'drop" operations. Using the system's features All elements needed for communication are at hand on the same screen, and the user can easily access these elements through "drag'n'drop" operations. The establishment of a communications session typically involves the following operations: Compile a list of communication partners by "drag'n'drop" from the Graphical catalog; Compile a list of attachments by "drag'n'drop" from the Document handler (optional and for fax and e-mail only); Type in an accompanying message to the attachments (optional and for fax and e-mail only); Establish the means of communication for the session by selecting either a telephone or mailbox icon. If more than one partner has been selected and the telephone icon is chosen, POT will establish a telephone conference. (A telephone call to one person is usually set up by "drag'n'drop" directly from the Graphical catalog to the telephone icon.) POT's main screen is shown in Figure 10. Notice the list of selected communication partners to the lower left, the accompanying message in the lower middle, and the list of attached documents to the lower right. The icons representing the means of communication are found on the vertical central bar. The upper mailbox icon includes indication of the number of messages in the local outbox and is used for sending mail. The lower mailbox icon, used for reading the local inbox[5], indicates the number of inbox messages. Clicking the inbox mail icon results in the senders of all received messages being shown in the list of communication partners. The message and the list of attachments correspond to the current received mail.
Figure 10. A snapshot of POT's main screen [click on the image map to learn about the elements of the interface].
	With the integrated Document handler, received messages and documents can easily be filed into the user's existing catalog structure by "drag'n'drop." Transferring data across analog telephone lines may take some time depending of the data volume. In order to inform the user of the status on the communication process running in the background, a simple animation of what is happening is provided. The snapshot of the animation appears in the lower part of Figure 10. This is a powerful way of providing continuous feedback to the user on background processes (Baecker and Small, 1990). More details on the design and use of the POT interface are available, as well as a demonstration of the interface. The choice of direct manipulation as the interaction mode is based on the need to design an interface with the lowest user threshold possible. When users have a choice, they tend to prefer direct manipulation (Shneiderman, 1982; 1983). This philosophy is said to have had a massive and largely beneficial impact on the face of personal computing (Frohlich, 1993), and it continues to influence the design of interactive software today as seen in POT. The POT software has been further developed during this pilot project, and additional functionality such as a multilevel graphical directory and the support for an ISDN platform have now been implemented. A demonstration version of the program for MS Windows is available.