I had an epiphany tonight that might be helpful to you, or especially to others wondering how to design help for visual systems (this may not be relevant to your voice-activated system, but read on). I bought a new PC for the first time in about 9 years, and of course a lot has changed since then. Usually I will just go big on the core elements, like memory and processor, so I don't really need to know very much, just that I'm getting the best. But then I got to the webcam. I don't plan on producing a TV show in my basement, and the grandparents think the kids are adorable no matter what the resolution when we Skype. Still for an extra $50, is it worth getting the premium webcam? Now, I hate those little blue circles with the white question mark in them. Why? Because they invariable don't HELP...they just give me reams of stuff to wade through, then ask over and over again "did this answer your question"? Or they link to some low-performance website that could use help itself. They're all bad, every one. But HP did something a little different. They had a link labelled "help me decide". I didn't need help operating my browser, I just needed some guidance, and that's exactly what I got, right in context. They even put the selection controls in the help, and linked them back to the parent page. Nice! This is the difference between a good salesperson in a retail environment and a bad one. The good one sees you sifting through a pile of sweaters and offers to help you find a specific size...she has predicted what your goal is and offered to assist you in getting there. The crappy salesperson just says "do you need any help?", making you feel like an invalid if you say yes. So, if you can predict what the user will need help with, then by all means BE EXPLICIT. If it's an in-car voice activated system, have it ask the right question at the right time...don't make it into one of those infernal IVR menus that asks you ten questions, then makes you confirm everything. In short, "help" should help, not just tell the user to RTFM. Dante
________________________________ From: [email protected] on behalf of Bill Marshall Sent: Tue 5/5/2009 10:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Any data on users making use of Help? Help functionality is a recurring point of contention in nearly every project I work on. I do Voice UX design, and very often our products are used in-car where users can't or shouldn't be looking at a screen for cues. Our big hurdle is helping users know what features are voice-enabled, and what vocabulary they can use. Context-sensitive help can be helpful for this. But I regularly hear "users don't use help," and I'd like to know how true that is. Does anyone know of any resources/studies on how likely it is that a user will seek help from a system? ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
