Welcome message from author
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
Human Computer
Interaction User Support
What Is Support? To Provide technical help (assistance) to System
users. Answer questions or resolve system problems for users.
A service provided by a hardware or software company that provides registered users with help and advice about their products.
Quick Guide With Cell-Phone For User Support
Coverage Of SupportSupport is possible through many ways.
Quick reference Task-specific help Full explanation Tutorial.
User Support Styles
command-based methods context-sensitive help tutorial help online documentation wizards and assistants adaptive help.
Requirements Of User Support
Designing a good help system needs to understand some features that help system should have.
Using all of these help features is not compulsory for a system.
Requirements Featureso Availability : continuous access concurrent to main applicationo Accuracy and completeness : help matches and covers actual system behavioro Consistency : between different parts of the help system ,Paper documentationo Robustness : correct error handling and predictable behavioro Flexibility : allows user to interact in a way appropriate to experience and tasko Unobtrusiveness : does not prevent the user continuing with work
Availability
o The user needs to be able to access help at any time during his interaction with the system.
o He should not have to quit the application he is working on in order to open the help application.
Accuracy and completeness
o It may seem obvious to state that the assistance provided should be accurate and complete.
If the assistance provided proves not to match the actual behavior of the system the user will, at best, become disillusioned with the help facilities, and, at worst, get into difficulties.
o The completeness also is very important.
Consistency
o Users require different types of help for different purposes.
This implies that a help system may incorporate a number of parts.
The help provided by each of these must be consistent with all the others and within itself
o Online help should also be consistent with paper documentation.
It should be consistent in terms of content, terminology and style of presentation.
Robustness
o Help systems are often used by people who are in difficulty, perhaps because the system is behaving unexpectedly or has failed altogether.
o It is important then that the help system itself should be robust, both by correct error handling and predictable behavior.
Flexibility
o Many help systems are rigid in that they will produce the same help message regardless of the expertise of the person seeking help or the context in which they are working.
o A flexible help system will allow each user to interact with it in a way appropriate to his needs.
Unobstrusiveness
o The help system should not prevent the user from continuing with normal work, nor should it interfere with the user’s application.
Approaches To User Support
01- 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
o This type of help is simple and efficient if the user knows what he wants to know about and is seeking either a reminder or more detailed information.
o However, it assumes that the user does know what he is looking for, which is often not the case.
Approaches To User Support
02-Command prompts Provide information about correct usage when an error occurs Good for simple syntactic errors Also assumes knowledge of the command• Another form of command prompting, which is not specifically
intended to provide help but which supports the user to a limited degree, is the use of menus and selectable icons.
Approaches To User Support03-Context Sensitive Help
o help request interpreted according to context in which it occurs. e.g. tooltips
o Question Mark (?) Buttons, Icons & Menus
o Context Sensitive Help Support
Approaches To User Support04-On-line Tutorialso User works through basics of application in a test
environment.o Can be useful but are often inflexible.
Approaches To User Support
05-On-line documentationo Paper documentation is made available on computer.o Continually available in common mediumo Can be difficult to browseo Hypertext used to support browsing.
wizards and assistants
06-Wizards (Realtime Demo)o task specific tool leads the user through task,
step by step, using user’s answers to specific questions
o example: Microsoft Office Wizardo useful for safe completion of complex or
infrequent taskso constrained task execution so limited flexibilityo must allow user to go back
Assistantso Monitor user behavior and offer suggestionso Unobtrusive and under user controlo Not unobtrusive, suggestions inappropriateo MS Office smart tags , Microsoft Clippy
Adaptive Help Systemo Adaptive help is a special case of a general class of
interactive systems, known as intelligent systems.o Different users will have different needs and levels of
understanding.o Adaptive help systems attempt to address these
problems.o The goal of adaptive help systems is to provide
personalized help to users working with complex interfaces.
Adaptive Help Problems
o knowledge requirements considerableo who has control of the interaction?o what should be adapted?o what is the scope of the adaptation?
Knowledge Representation: User Modeling Knowledge-representation is the field of artificial intelligence
that focuses on designing computer representations that capture information about the world that can be used to solve complex problems.
The main goal of user modeling is customization and adaptation of systems to the user's specific needs.
Simple examples of this are browser or email preferences that can adjust certain parameters of the system to the requirements of the user.
Quantification• User moves between levels of expertise• Based on quantitative measure of what he knows. Stereotypes• User is classified into a particular category. Overlay models• Idealized model of expert use is constructed• Actual use compared to ideal• Model may contain the commonality or difference
Knowledge representation: Domain and Task Modeling All adaptive help systems must have some knowledge of the
system itself. In order to provide relevant and appropriate advice.
Knowledge representation: Modeling Advisory Strategy Involves choosing the correct style of advice for a given
situation. e.g. reminder, tutorial, etc. Few intelligent help systems model advisory strategy, but
choice of strategy is still important.
Techniques for knowledge representation Rule-based techniques• Knowledge presented as rules and facts• Interpreted using inference mechanism• Can be used in relatively large domains. Frame-based techniques• Knowledge stored in structures with slots to be filled• Useful for a small domain. Network based• Knowledge represented as relationships between facts• Can be used to link frames. Example based• Knowledge represented implicitly within decision structure• Trained to classify rather than programmed with rules• Requires little knowledge acquisition
DESIGNING USER SUPPORT SYSTEMS There are many ways of providing user support and it is up
to the designer to decide which is most appropriate for any given system. However, there are a number of things which the designer should take into account.
Presentation issues• How is help requested?• The first decision the designer must make is how the user
will access help. There are a number of choices. Help may be a command, a button, a function which can be switched on or off, or a separate application.
Implementation issues• Alongside the presentation issues the designer must make
implementation decisions. Some of these may be forced by physical constraints, others by the choices made regarding the user’s requirements for help.
Problems with knowledge representation and modeling
Knowledge representation is the central issue in adaptive help systems, but it is not without its problems. Knowledge is often difficult to elicit, particularly if a domain expert is not available.
Other issues Other issues that should be considered in designing an
adaptive help system are initiative, effect and scope.
Arslan Khan (3871)
Muhammad Umair (3825)
Umar Farooq (3856)
Irfan Haidar (3897)
Related Documents
