Context Sensitive Help?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Carolyn wonders: <<Our web application comes standard with RoboHelp's 
WebHelp for online help. We have a customer who is requiring context 
sensitive help. Our users are typically novice to intermediate computer 
users, and in my experience rarely use the online help. The application 
is pretty easy, and they always get on site training and user guides. 
I'm trying to convince Sales that the context sensitive help does not 
add enough value to justify the extra effort. We would not recover any 
additional costs over the cost of the regular WebHelp.>>

I haven't created WebHelp, but at least with WinHelp, there was never 
much extra effort involved in making the help context-sensitive. As I 
created the Help topics, I gave each a Help ID, and when I was done, I 
simply passed the map file to the developers and they linked it into 
their software. It did take us a bit of time to incorporate and test 
the links, but not a significant amount of time for the size of 
software we were creating. Is the WebHelp interface so different?

In terms of users not using the Help, I largely solved that problem by 
asking our trainer to spend 5 minutes demonstrating the Help system. If 
you're doing on-site training, why not do the same?

Does it really add value? Not if it's poorly implemented. I've often 
clicked the Help button in various commercial programs and not revealed 
any useful help related to my current context (usually a dialog box). 
But that's a design flaw, not an inherent problem with the concept of 
context-sensitive help. Are your index and search engine good enough 
that context-sensitivity adds little in terms of efficiency for the 
user? If so, then perhaps there's not much to be gained from making the 
Help context-sensitive. But me, I like my help as context-sensitive as 
possible. When it's well-designed, it's a great comfort to me, and I 
curse the techwhirlers who created it a bit less than usual. <g>

Better still, I'd like to see embedded help. But that's a whole other 
challenge.

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Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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