Re: (no subject)

[Liam Quin <liam holoweb net>]

On Wed, Nov 15, 2000 at 01:17:54PM -0600, Tom Musgrove wrote:
> That is a good point, sorta like 'stopping and asking for directions'
> <grin>.
> 
> I was thinking along the lines of when a user is willing to ask a
> coworker/friend for help, but still hasn't tried the help menu.  Since
> asking for help from a coworker would be equally (or more so) implying that
> the user is admitting defeat, I would suggest that the asking for help from
> a coworker has a different basis for users not using help systems than the
> above.

Perhaps there is a feeling of the humans vs. the computers?  Asking the
computer for help is defeat, but asking for a human to help the person
fight the computer isn't?  How is the request worded?  Or, are they
asking someone they trust?

I agree that searching in help is difficult.o

One very useful and difficult thing to do is to add help that says,
if you were trying to do this "obviously unrelated" thing, go _here_.
Doing this well requires collecting data carefully, though, I think.

Adding a "related operations" button that says, e.g. on the save as
dialogue, "can't see the format you're looking for? try _export to_
or the _format manager_", muight help.  Or it might just lead to
more frustration as people go around helplesly in circles until their
office chairs explode.

Lee

-- 
Liam Quin - Barefoot in Toronto - liam holoweb net - http://www.holoweb.net/
Ankh: irc.sorcery.net www.valinor.sorcery.net irc.gnome.org www.advogato.org
author, The Open Source XML Database Toolkit, Wiley, August 2000
Co-author, The XML Specification Guide, Wiley, 1999