Online Help
Design and Evaluation
Will be published approx. on 1. November 1999
Book
Hardback
200 pages
978-0-89391-858-3 (ISBN)
Description
This text is designed to bridge the gap between research and practice, by emphasizing practice from a conceptual viewpoint. The authors discuss and review the literature on online help and they provide a cognitive perspective on the design and evaluation issues. The goal is to provide a review and analysis of the issues in the design and evolution of online help systems. The book should be of interest to those conducting research on document design and technical writing in English and psychology and in the college of engineering; interface design in computer science, psychology, and human factors; and human factors issues in government and industry labs, the defence industry, the communications industry, and the computer industry.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Intellect
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
ISBN-13
978-0-89391-858-3 (9780893918583)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
Series Editor's Preface xi
Chapter 1 Online Help in Context 1
Designing Usable Systems 5
Helping the User 9
Online Help Defined 18
Conclusion 20
An Overview of the Book 20
Chapter 2 Medium of Delivery and the Design Process 23
Description of the Study and its Participants 27
Interview Analysis 27
Core Issues Influencing the Design of Online Help 28
Constraints on the Design of Online Documentation 32
The Relationship between Online and Hardcopy Documentation 34
Training Writers to Develop Online Documentation 35
The Writer's Responsibility [3]46
Issues and Principles for Online Document Design 37
Chapter 3 A Task Model for Online Help 41
The Audience for Online Help: What we have
Learned from Research in Document Design 43
The Audience for Online Help: What we have
Learned from Research in Interface Design 48
A Task Model for Online Help 57
Summary 68
Chapter 4 Designing Interactive Help Systems 69
Dealing with Advice 70
Design Principles for Online Help: Assumptions 72
Designing a Help System: Principles and Pitfalls 75
Final Questions 117
Summary 120
Chapter 5 Understanding the Design Process 123
Characterizing our Participants 124
Characterizing Help Design Teams 125
The Design Process Elaborated 129
An Overview of the Design Process 151
Research and Review 152
Project Management 153
Create Design Specifications for the Content 153
Create Design Specifications for the Interface and for Functionality 156
Prototyping 156
Produce Help Text 157
Implement Help 158
Pre-release Testing/Quality Assurance 158
Post-release Testing and Maintenance 159
Summary of Design Process Findings 160
Chapter 6 An Overview of Evaluation Requirements and Options 161
Defining a "Good" Help System 161
The Audience for the Evaluation? 163
End-Users and their Representators 163
Designers and Developers 165
Sources of evaluation data 165
Data from Experts 166
Data from End Users 169
Effective evaluation strategies 177
A Formative Evaluation Strategy 177
A summative Evaluation Strategy 178
Chapter 7 The Help Design Evaluation Questionnaire (HDEQ) 181
Goals for the Design 182
Evaluating Content vs Design 183
Evaluating the Design of Online Help 184
Structure for HDEQ 184
Selecting items for HDEQ 184
The Help Design Evaluation Questionnaire 186
Administering HDEQ 186
The HDEQ Questions 187
User Task 1: Representing the Problem 187
User Task 2: Accessing the Help System 189
User Task 3: Selecting a Topic 192
User Task 4: Scanning the Information 194
User Task 5: Obtaining the Required Content 198
User Task 6: Understanding the Information 199
User Task 7: Navigating 200
User Task 8: Applying the information 205
Summary 207
Chapter 8 Findings from the Evaluation of Help Systems 209
Evaluation Goals 209
Overall Ratings 211
Summary 216
Appendix The Help Design Evaluation Questionnaire 217
References 235
Author Index 251
Subject Index 257