CS 407 Human Computer Interface

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CS 407 Human Computer Interface

• Class 34
• Friday, November 12, 1999

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Thought for the Day

• The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly
  between
• the ages of four and eighteen.
• At four we know all the questions,
• at eighteen all the answers.

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New Browser Feature

The cartoon that was on this page in class was
found at Todays Cartoon by Randy Bergen.
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Todays Topics

• Chapter 12 Help Documentation

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Project 2 Assignment

• On the web site
• Any questions about Project 2?

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Chapter 12

• Help and Documentation

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Overview

• Users require different types of support at
  different times but all user support should
  fulfill some basic requirements.
• Implementation and presentation both need to be
  considered in designing user support.

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Overview (2)

• Types of user support
• a) quick reference
• b) task specific help
• c) full explanation
• d) tutorial

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Overview(3)

• These may be provided by help and/or
  documentation.
• help --- problemoriented and specific
• documentation --- systemoriented and general
• The same design principles apply to both.

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Requirements

• Availability
• Continuous access concurrent to main application.
  
• Accuracy and completeness
• Help matches actual system behavior and covers
  all aspects of system behavior.
• Consistency
• Different parts of the help system and any paper
  documentation are consistent in content,
  terminology and presentation.

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Requirements(2)

• Robustness
• Correct error handling and predictable behavior.
• Flexibility
• Allows user to interact in a way appropriate to
  experience and task.
• Unobtrusiveness
• Does not prevent the user continuing with work
  nor interfere with application.

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Approaches to user support

• Command assistance
• User requests help on particular command.
• e.g., UNIX man, DOS help.
• Good for quick reference.
• Assumes user know what to look for.

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Approaches to user support (2)

• Command Prompts
• Provide information about correct usage when an
  error occurs.
• Good for simple syntactic errors.
• Also assumes knowledge of the command.

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Approaches to user support (3)

• Context sensitive help
• Help request interpreted according to context in
  which it occurs.
• e.g., Spy, Balloons Help.
• Online tutorials
• User works through basics of application in a
  test environment.
• Can be useful but are often inflexible.

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Approaches to user support (4)

• Online documentation
• Paper documentation is made available on
  computer.
• Continually available in common medium but can be
  difficult to browse.
• Hypertext used to support browsing.

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Adaptive Help

• Use knowledge of the individual user, task,
  domain and instruction to provide help adapted to
  user's needs.