User Support

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Contents

Types of user support Requirements of user support

systems Types of help systems Authoring issues

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User Support Some claim that a well designed

interactive system will require no additional user support

This is untrue of even the best systems Systems require four types of support

Quick reference Task-specific help Full explanation tutorial

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Quick Reference This is a short form of help to

remind the user of the syntax of a command

Often, it is automatic if the user pauses for a certain period

It can take the form of Tooltips file name completion Code assistants

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Quick Reference

A Java Tool Tip

A Code Assistant

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Task-Specific Help This is used when the user encounters a

problem while performing a task and needs help to complete the task

This is often implemented as context-sensitive help A help button is provided on a dialog When the button is clicked, help is provided

on the dialog being used Often, this is implemented as simply links

into the existing online documentation

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Full Explanation This is the full explanation of how the

system or a specific feature works This information is usually consulted

by experts It is often not immediately available

to novices to avoid overwhelming them

It can be provided online or in paper form or both

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Tutorial A tutorial serves to introduce the new

user to how to use a system It demonstrates how to use the system

to accomplish practical goals Often organized as

System concepts Overview of the interface Your first use of the system A list of how-to do specific tasks

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Contents

Types of user support Requirements of user support

systems Types of help systems Authoring issues

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Requirements of User Support Systems What would the ideal help system be

like? This is a difficult question to answer

since it depends upon The nature of the application The anticipated users of the system

We will list desirable features of an idealized help system

Real systems might differ from this, often for good reasons

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Availability The user should be able to

Access the help system while running the program

Access help while the program is not running Access help while running another program

These goals can be achieved if the help system Runs concurrently with the system Is run in a windowed environment where it is not

dependent on the parent application for rendering

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Accuracy & Completeness Applications are updated regularly Often, the documentation is forgotten

and allowed to become outdated This can result in help actually being

wrong Obviously, this must be avoided It is also important to ensure that all

features have been documented since a few can be easily overlooked

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Consistency A program might have

On-line help Paper manuals Context-sensitive help

It is important that it be consistent in terms of Content – they all state the same things Terminology – they all use the same terms Style – they all look similar

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Robustness Help systems are often used by people

who are confused This makes it important that

The help system is easy to use The help system should not crash The help system should have good error

handling The help system should have predictable

behaviour

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Flexibility The help system should be able to adapt

to the needs of the user It should offer simple help to novices Advanced help to experts

These goals can be achieved in various ways Modularized help systems Context-sensitive help Adaptive help systems which infer the user’s

expertise and the task being performed Hypertext systems which allow exploration to

various levels of depth

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Unobtrusive

The help system should not interfere with the user’s normal work

The help system should not interfere with the operation of other programs Do not grab focus from the user Do not lock the system while help is

active Do not use system or global modality for

help systems

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Contents

Types of user support Requirements of user support

systems Types of help systems Authoring issues

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Types of Help Systems

There are different types of help systems

They differ because of The technology on which they are

implemented The sophistication of the user The needs and nature of the

application

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Command Assistance This provides help when the user

requests it Examples include

UNIX man DOS help Windows help

These systems work well if the user knows what they are looking for

They do not work well if the user wants to explore new capabilities of the system

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Command Prompts

These are used in command line interfaces

When the user enters an incorrect command, they display the correct syntax of the command

They can also use menus to help the user issue the command they want

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Command Prompts IBM’s Time

Sharing Option (TSO) is a command line system which uses a menu (ISPF) to help the users issue commands

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Context-sensitive Help These are systems which provide

help on the context in which the user is working

They often take the form of a help button on a dialog

They save the user from having to locate the relevant parts of the help system

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Online Tutorials

These are systems which guide the user through the system through examples and might let the user perform operations

under the systems guidance Often have limited intelligence and

can recognize incorrect input as correct

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Online Tutorials Training Wheels is an interface proposed

by researchers at IBM The user is presented with a full version of

the interface but with limited functionality This lets them explore the system without

being able to do any real damage If they access an area which has been

disabled, they are told it is unavailable

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Online Documentation At its simplest this is just the paper

documentation stored on the computer Advantages

Don’t have to find manuals Searchable

Disadvantages more difficult to read text off a computer

screen Provides more information than the user

wants Can still be difficult to find what you are

looking for

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Online Documentation

One approach to placing manuals online is to use hypertext Allows interrelated items to be linked Allows tables of contents to be linked Can make finding things easier Suffers from the problem where the

user’s path is so complicated they get lost in the document

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Online Documentation An alternative approach is minimal

documentation This is a cut-down version of the full

manual with just the essentials retained This makes it

Easy to read Easy to navigate

Users can learn a task with minimal documentation 40% faster than with the full documentation

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Wizards A wizard is a program which helps a user

perform a complex task It leads the user step by step It asks the user a series of questions to determine

what should be done It hides the complexity of the underlying interface They often let the user back up to change previous

decisions Some provide progress indicators, especially for

long, involved tasks They allow novices to perform complex tasks Are great for infrequently performed tasks

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Wizards

The drawbacks of wizards include They can be overly rigid and constrain

the user Many options are omitted Since the user does not see the

output or commands issued, he or she does not learn how to use the underlying commands themselves

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Assistants Assistants are software tools which

monitor user behaviour and try to offer hints or suggestions when they recognize particular sequences

Eager was one of the early systems When it sees the user repeating actions,

a cat appears suggesting the next step The cat is unobtrusive and can be

controlled by the user

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Assistants Clippy is the Microsoft Office Assistant

Clippy was despised as irritating and unhelpful Clippy failed to be unobtrusive

The user was presented with long lists to read Distracting animations were performed for no reason The user was unable to continue to work effectively Many of the suggestions were wrong or inappropriate Many found an animated paper clip to be more

annoying than cute

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Assistants Clippy has been retired to the big bit

bucket in the sky… He can be reincarnated in the latest office

by turning him on or off, under user control His main functions have been taken over by

smart tags Small icons which appear near where the user is

working Clicking on them produces help Ignore them or go on to another task and they

disappear

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Assistants

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Agents Microsoft agent is a generalization

of the assistant that supports 3-D animated characters Text-to-speech Speech recognition

This evolved from the earlier attempt to produce an agent to aid the user, called Microsoft Bob

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Agents

Clippy was the first use of the Microsoft Agent software

Clippy’s behaviour was controlled by a sophisticated Bayesian probability program

To date, all of the agents produced by Microsoft have been deemed failures

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Agents The user’s displeasure was not limited to

Clippy There were a variety of other characters

which could be substituted Users found these to be equally annoying

PeedyMerlinGenieRobby

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Agents The failure of agents is because they ignored

two main factors in human psychology Human are immediately distracted by motion in

their peripheral vision. Thus, the animation distracted the user

Faces or caricatures of faces are highly distracting And finally, the interruptions were often at

comically inappropriate and annoying times The result was that the agents were almost

universally despised

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Aero Sidebar

Windows Vista is introducing the sidebar

This can hold a variety of information, including help

It will replace the use of agents It looks to be far less intrusive and

can provide help across applications

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Aero Sidebar

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Adaptive Help Systems

Every user has a different level of skill Familiar with a subset of the functionality Expertise in some systems but none in

others Different levels of understanding

Adaptive help systems adapt to the skill level of the user and offer help and suggestions appropriate to the user

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User Modeling Adaptive systems build a model of

the user and his or her skill level This model takes time to be built Most systems start with a generic

user model and refine this as it observes how the user behaves

There are different ways to represent the user model

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Quantification Categories are created based on the

user’s level of expertise Real users are then placed into one of

these categories based on behaviour Each category has pre-defined help that

will be provided to members of that category

Users will be moved between categories if the expertise they demonstrate changes

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Stereotypes This creates categories of stereotypical

users rather than just categories based on expertise

Once again, users are assigned to stereotypes by comparing user behaviour with that for the stereotype

Stereotypes perform well is the stereotypes are well chosen and represent actual user types

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Overlay Models A model of an expert user is

constructed Each user is then represented by what

they have in common with the expert model and by the differences

The advantage of this technique is that the system knows what the ideal user is and can measure progress in attaining it

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Task Modeling The system must be able to recognize

the task the user is performing before it can offer help

Many systems do this by storing a series of steps and then comparing user actions to these steps

This fails when the user approaches the problem in an unconventional manner

Task recognition is a problem for both adaptive help systems and agents

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Knowledge Representation Adaptive systems must be able to store

information on The user User models Tasks

Representation techniques are drawn from artificial intelligence Rule-based techniques Frame-based techniques Network-based techniques Example-based techniques

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Rule-based Techniques

This represents knowledge as a series of rules and facts

This information is interpreted by a an inference mechanism

These are the techniques used by expert systems

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Rule-based Techniques

IF

command is EDIT file

AND

lastCommand is COMPILE file

THEN

task is DEBUG

action is “describe debugger”

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Frame-based Techniques A frame is a data structure containing

labeled slots or attributes Each attribute describes some aspect of

the userUser

expertise: novice

command: EDIT file

lastCommand: Compile file

sessionErrors: 6

action: describe debugger

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Network-based Techniques These represent knowledge as

relationships between facts This is commonly implemented as

a semantic networkCC is an instance of COMPILECOMPILE is a COMMANDCOMPILE is related to DEBUGCOMPILE is related to EDITDebugger facilitates DEBUG

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Example-based Techniques These represent command patters as

linked structures They could be stored in a decision tree For example

EDIT file COMPILE file

This would be recognized as a task and indicate that information on debugging is appropriate

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Problems with Knowledge Representation It takes a lot of time to gather the

information It takes an expert to provide the

information Gathering information on

individual users takes time Interpreting user actions is difficult

and prone to error

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Contents

Types of user support Requirements of user support

systems Types of help systems Authoring issues

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Help Design Issues Initiative

Should help intrude on the user or should the user request help?

If it intrudes, it can disrupt the user If it is invoked only when the user wants it,

it will not be able to bring new techniques to the attention of the user

The solution is to allow the user to query help at any time and for help to intrude on the user in the least disruptive manner

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Effect Agents and adaptive help often store

large amounts of information on users and tasks

This information is expensive to create and maintain

Often, it can be pruned to reduce it to the essential information for the task

This minimizes the information to only that required for the necessary effect

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Scope Should help be offered at the

application or system level? Modeling users at the system level

is far more complex than at the application level

Dealing with concurrent execution and interleaved activities with many applications makes it even more difficult

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Presentation Issues How is help requested?

Help button on screen Help button on keyboard

How is help displayed? Full-screen or windowed Pop-up dialogs The choice depends on the type of

help and the amount to be displayed

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Presentation Issues

How much to display? The amount displayed should not be

too large as it is harder to read Hypertext allows text to be broken

into smaller units Writing style

Clear, concise, to the point Avoid use of unfamiliar terminology