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Subject:Re: What does online help need? From:Bonni Graham <Bonni_Graham_at_Enfin-SD -at- RELAY -dot- PROTEON -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 27 Dec 1993 13:24:00 EST
Steven Owens asks:
"What is needed in an online help system?"
A very clear discussion of the kinds of questions users expect to find answered
online is in a book called "The Art or Human-Computer Interface Design" by
Brenda Laurel, in an article called "Building User-Centered On-Line [sic] Help"
by Abigail Sellen and Anne Nicol. I don't know about the rest of the book (a
coworker copied the article for me), but this article helped me to clarify my
own thinking about online help and the purpose/contents thereof. BTW, the
article was based on acutal research - they watched users use programs and
access (or not) the online help.
Bonni Graham |
Technical Writer | "Never tell people how to
Easel Corporation, ENFIN Technology Lab | do things. Tell them what
Bonni_Graham_at_Enfin-SD -at- relay -dot- proteon -dot- com | to so and they will surprise
President, San Diego STC | you with their ingenuity"
|
NOTE: apparently my email address needs | --George Patton
to be typed exactly as it appears here, |
punctuation and all, or the system gets |
upset. |
