WERABE UNIVERSITY
Institute of Technology
Department of Information Technology
Chapter 8: User Support
Users require different types of support at different times. There are four main types of
assistance that users require:
Quick reference Full explanation
Task-specific help Tutorial
User Support means providing training, assistance and support to users of the Subscription
Services. User Support includes answering user questions and resolving problems that can be
resolved by reading the Product Documentation.
Usually this level of support is provided by End User’s own internal resources, but may be
provided by a third party.
User support providing end users with after sales support including, but not limited to, customer
service, technical support and warranty service on the PC Product, Enterprise PC Product and
Other Product.
➢ Issues:
– different types of support at different times, implementation and presentation both
important, all need careful design
➢ Provided by help and documentation
– help - problem-oriented and specific, documentation - system-oriented and general,
same design principles apply to both
For example, when we take as an example End-user support: It is an important issue in the use
and maintenance of computer information systems. In the past, traditional mainframe systems
have not been effective in providing end-users support such as training, documentation, and help
lines. PC hardware and software manufacturers facing similar problems with end-user support
have included the concept of system redesign as an end-user support option.
This manuscript explores the support options and researches the end-user revolt against poorly
designed systems and inadequate support. The results suggest that PC end-users are more likely
to suggest a system redesign as a support option compared to more traditional mainframe
personnel. It is concluded that perhaps a change is necessary in our conventional methods of
analysis and design when dealing with end-user computer systems.
Requirements of user support
Requirements of User Support designing a good help system needs to understand some features
that help system should have. Using all of these help features is not compulsory for a system.
• Availability
–continuous access concurrent to main application
• Accuracy and completeness
– help matches and covers actual system behavior
• Consistency
– between different parts of the help system and paper documentation
• Robustness
– correct error handling and predictable behavior
• Flexibility
– allows user to interact in a way appropriate to experience and task
• Unobtrusiveness
– does not prevent the user continuing with work
Approaches to user support
• Command assistance
– User requests help on particular command
e.g., UNIX man, DOS help
– Good for quick reference, assumes user know what to look for
• Command prompts
– Provide information about correct usage when an error occurs, Good for simple syntactic
errors, also assumes knowledge of the command
• Context sensitive help
– help request interpreted according to context in which it occurs. e.g. tooltips
• On-line tutorials
– user works through basics of application in a test environment, can be useful but are often in
flexible.
• On-line documentation
– paper documentation is made available on computer, continually available in common
medium, can be difficult to browse, hypertext used to support browsing.
Adaptive help systems
Adaptive help systems (also called intelligent help systems) is a specific kind of help systems and
a recognized research direction on the crossroads of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Human-
Computer Interaction (HCI).
A help system tracks user search queries and builds a database by matching the user query to the
user's selected result from the search system. As the user repeatedly searches, the user's
terminology may be associated with particular search keywords. A relevance factor may be
computed using the database for future searches. In some cases, modifications to a user interface
may be made by replacing the user's terminology with a function in the user interface, or by
highlighting a user's terminology on the user interface using a floating box such as a tool tip.
• Use knowledge of the context, individual user, task, domain and instruction to provide help
adapted to user's needs.
• Problems
– knowledge requirements considerable, who has control of the interaction? what should be
adapted? what is the scope of the adaptation?
Designing user support systems
• User support is not an `add on’
– should be designed integrally with the system.
• Concentrate on content and context of help rather than technological issues.