Active help found beneficial in wizard of oz study

Emerging AI techniques will make possible new intelligent help features, such as ‘active help’ (interrupting the user when appropriate) and ‘back channel’ communication (allowing users to send a message to a help system). An investigation was conducted to determine whether these features would be useful. In the experiment, users of a job scheduling application liked active help and performed better with it than did people without it. However, having a back channel was not particularly valuable to participants. Since developing this feature requires a lot of work, one should find evidence that it will be worth the effort before proceeding.