User Interfaces and Help Systems: From Helplessness to Intelligent Assistance

摘要

Despite a large body of multidisciplinary research on helpful and user-orientedinterface design, help facilities found in most commercial software are so ill-conceived thatthey are often ‘unhelpful’. From a wide spectrum of disciplines and software tools, we presentan extensive review of related work, identifying their limitations as well as their most prom-isingaspects. Using this material, we attempt to recapitulate the necessary requirements foruseful help systems.