In each workshop, some 20 minutes were allocated to teach the basic futplex functions. Because of this time constraint, futplex got a point and click interface based on web technology, which borrowed concepts from word processing whenever possible. Much work was done to make the futplex user interface behave in a natural and predictable way. Of the three hour total duration of a workshop, the participants would use the futplex system for some 100 minutes to collaboratively construct a hyperdocument about a certain topic. This time frame dictated that the item, the unit of work in the futplex system, had to be small.
Items are typically one or two sentences long.
Futplex can be called a shared workspace system, though the unit of work in futplex is much smaller than the units of work in most shared workspace systems. Because of this small unit of work, futplex can also be called a shared whiteboard system. In the workshops, there was no such sharing of focus. Most of the time, the participants would all be working on different pages. This lack of restrictions allows for annotation and discussion on all pages.