Re: Online/print

Subject: Re: Online/print
From: Elna -dot- Tymes -at- SYNTEX -dot- COM
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 1994 12:58:33 PDT

In article <TECHWR-L%94092310352901 -at- VM1 -dot- UCC -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU>,
<mpriestley -at- vnet -dot- ibm -dot- com> writes:
<stuff deleted>

> One of the useful possibilities here is a more responsive and interactive
> help system. Rather than a reference manual that sits on your desk in
> its original wrapping (or in its original folder online), you get something
> like Mac's bubble help, and perhaps a monitoring system that looks for
> "trouble signs" (like repetitive unproductive command sequences - eg
> scanning and closing menus over and over again - or the same info message
> coming up three times in a row, or...), and then displays/updates a monitor
> window with a helpful hint/explanation, and a list of possible tasks they
> are attempting. Then, if they select a task, the help system can walk
> them through it, step by step, monitoring them for mistakes and correcting
> them gently (with an explanation geared towards the misunderstanding that
> might generate that mistake).

Unfortunately, that's what is IN the existing Help system. It's all there,
just waiting for them to click a button. It's glitzy, it's thorough, it's
nonlinear, all the things a Help system should be. They're just not using
it, and they're not even remembering their own actions from the training
class where they used it before.

'you can lead a horse to water,...' <sigh>

Elna


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