RE: (no subject)

["Tom Musgrove" <TomM pentstar com>]

>  o The user tried "help"


>  o A full blown help system (the user nearly never used it but it was a
    stress release to have it)

> John

Hi John,

the reason users use help as a last resort, is that help is generally almost
USELESS to users who are not skilled at picking the search terms that the
help creator used.  Instead, they will ask someone who is knowledgeable
about what they want to do, or is good at searching help.  Another reason
that users use help as a 'last resort' is that there is a fairly good chance
that what they want to do may not be explained in the Help.  The third
reason is that help does not necessarily explain the answer in such a way
that the user can understand.

I posted (I thought on this list, but elsewhere as well?) suggestions for
improving help that should eliminate many of the problems it currently has,
and move it up the hierarchy a bit.

The suggestions were

1) synonym mapping of search queries
This makes a large step towards eliminating the problem of using different
search terms from the help creator
To make it even more useful, fuzzy matching can be used for misspelled words
(another common problem with searches by unskilled searchers...)

2) help linked to IRC
If the query doesn't immediately find what the user was looking for, the
question can be submitted to a IRC help channel (one populated with
'trusted' respondents so that they don't get profanity, etc. as a response).
The IRC person then searches help and maps the question to the question
listed in the help (if the answer exists in help).  The question then goes
to a database to be added to the help system on the next update.

If the query does not exist, then the following can be done...

a)  Request more information - the IRC person creates a yes/no question for
the user to solicit more information
again, submitted to the database for future reference (this would be similar
to the Microsoft guided help...)

b)  Create a tutorial on how to solve the problem - this could be a script
description generated from actually doing the action, with comments
inserted.

Thus for 'how can I make my text bold faced' - I would select text, click on
the bold font character.
Two scripts would be generated, one a text description as above, the other a
visual hint system, that would highlight the next action to be done.  Thus a
small box near the text say 'highlight text'.  Then after the text is
highlighted, a box above the boldface icon 'click on icon'.  This would also
be amendable to text to speech (TTS) software as well.  This could also use
the custom mappings of the user, so they can use their keybindings in the
explanation...

This addresses all of the problems above, and could save tech people and
users many hundreds of hours.  Tech support at some companies would likely
voluntarily hang out in the IRC help room (or be required by management..).

Tom M.
TomM pentstar com