Hello Uwe, hello list members,
I'm answering on your question concerning the Help Agent. I think there
are several types of users:
1) The people who want to get their work done - independent from advices
of the application that might help them to be more efficient. (The "But
I just want to..." people.)
I think those people don't want to read the help text, because this
costs time. The help text mentions the OOo options (Tools - Options
- ...) and "forces" the user to open a very complex dialog. This may be
frustrating. Please remember, if OOo looks simple on the first sight,
those people request OOo to behave in a predictable manner.
In my opinion, those people would greatly benefit from the help agent
advices.
2) People who don't understand the meaning of the "bulb".
People who do not understand the meaning of the "bulb picture" and do
not want to "explore" the application might just ignore the help agent
window. If it is not important, it will disappear. Well, it disappears
after some period of time...
3) People who don't even see the help agent window.
People are concentrated on their work and do not recognize the existence
of the help agent. Their eye position is crucial for that - the help
agent window opens in the peripheral field of vision.
Okay, maybe those people see the help agent window a bit late and then
do not recognize that there is a relationship between the "AutoCorrect"
and this window.
By the way, on my notebook computer screen (15 inch), the help agent
window at the lower right corner is about 2x1,5cm "large".
4) People who were disappointed by the quality of the hints
If people do not benefit from the first hints the help agent provided,
they will not care if the other hints could be helpful again.
5) People who do not want help agent because they "hate" AutoCorrect.
The help agent window is opened after some event of AutoCorrect. If they
type and there is a change they did not want - they will state that they
do not like the help agent.
Example: An user will start Writer with German localization to just type
some English text. If there is a beginning quote it will be converted to
be at the bottom of the line. But the user did not intend to write a
German text and most likely will blame the AutoCorrect function. And
that caused the help agent window to appear...
Another thing is, that in Germany some conventions have changed for some
abbreviations ("z.B." is now "z. B."). OOo Writer recognizes two
independent words and upper cases the first letter in every sentence. In
the past, the "word" "z.B." could be integrated in the exception list -
this is not possible at the moment.
Solution:
I don't know the exact solution, but I strongly suggest to keep the help
agent. Instead of removing it or moving it to the status bar, the
behavior should be improved. I think it is possible to develop a
solution which fits well (by the way: for me, speaking as a user, this
is no problem at all).
(I did not spend very much time on the following idea. So this is JUST
an idea.) Example: Maybe for the upper case AutoCorrect function some
visual "bling" at the position of the change. Then correct the begin of
the sentence by blending the small character to the one in upper case.
So the user is noticed that something has been changed automatically. If
the user hovers the corresponding position with the mouse, give some
information and provide to open the options window to deactivate that
feature. Or directly provide a function to deactivate that feature in
the current document.
The competitors:
Some good thing in Microsoft Office is the smart tags feature.
Primarily, it is not related to the help system, but if something is
changed, a little information mark pops up at the position of the
change. And it even offers to remove the change or deactivate the
AutoCorrect feature. (And here is the dark side: So people will never
learn to use the options dialog.)
The development environment National Instruments LabVIEW handles those
"Just-In-Time Advices" by opening a small window with a slightly (!)
animated information mark. In this window there is some introductory
text with a link to the help system. You will see it and read if this is
something for you...
Some more words on the help system. In general, I like the help system
in OOo very much. In contrast to Microsoft Office it is:
* Accessible from anywhere
(Some modal windows in MS Office 2003 don't allow the user to click on
the help button in the toolbar. Bad, bad mistake!)
* Well structured UI layout
([If I remember correctly...] The search field in the upper right opens
the sidebar with the search results. This changes the view on my
document content. Clicking on one search result opens the help windows,
which resizes the application window.
Additionally, I don't like the "hopping" of the search entry field in
the sidebar.
Furthermore, if you want to close the help window with the last entry in
the context menu of the taskbar item, a HTML-source info window will
open.)
* ...
By the way, I think this issue is also related to the new incubator
project User Experience (project lead by Lutz Hoeger and Matthias
Müller-Prove). Please consider to post on [ux-discuss]. Well, hope this
helps.
Bye,
Christoph
Am Mittwoch, den 21.02.2007, 15:36 +0100 schrieb Uwe Fischer:
> Hi,
>
> please have a look at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Help_Agent
>
> Some users don't like the Help Agent.
> We don't get a lot of positive feedback at all, therefore I don't know
> if poor Help Agent has some friends somewhere.
>
> What do you think:
> - do we still need the Help Agent?
> - should Help Agent be reduced in size or converted to a text message in
> the status bar?
>
> Uwe
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