Designing online help systems for reflective users

Designing online help systems for reflective users

Empirical studies have revealed that most users are dissatisfied with current help systems. One of the causes for many of the problems found in help systems is a lack of coupling between the process for creating online help and the human-computer interaction design of the application. In this paper, we present a method for building online help based on design models according to a Semiotic Engi...

Designing robust multimodal systems for diverse users and environments

Multimodal interfaces are being developed that permit our highly skilled and coordinated communicative behavior to control system interactions in a more transparent and flexible interface experience than ever before. The presence of modality choice per se is an important feature and design issue for multimodal interfaces. As applications become more complex, a single modality does not permit va...

Designing Work Support Systems - For and With Skilled Users

Online Help Systems: learning while Working

Most widely-used computer software packages, such as word processors, spreadsheets and web browsers, incorporate comprehensive help systems, partly because the software is meant for those with little technical knowledge. This paper identifies four systematic philosophies or approaches to help system delivery, namely the documentation approach, based on written documents, either paper-based or o...

Model-Based Design of Online Help Systems

Online help systems are typically used as a last resource in interactive breakdown situations. In this paper, we present a method for building online help based on design models according to a semiotic engineering approach. We show the benefits of having designers explicitly communicate their design vision to users, and we also point at the need to foster a new culture for online help. We show ...