A Usability Study On Online Help Of Office Word

When we use software to work, we often need help because of various problems. Online help is becoming a primary help form gradually. More and more people try to experience online help because of its timeliness, multiform and vitality. But meanwhile many complains comes out with the difficulty to use of online help, so conducting usability study on online help has a big significance. In this study the author uses a series of usability methods which are widely used in design and development of IT product to study the usability of online help of Microsoft Office 2003 Word.The study is divided into four stages. The first stage is to understand the current situation, methods and cases of online help usability study, to learn the design and develop flow of online help with various UCD methods. The second stage is to study user behavior and requirement by questionnaire and reviewing interview. From the results the author found that there was a gap between online help and the habit of daily use. For example: arrangement of help forms is not logical, few of assistant contents, uses' lack of free control etc. Then in the third phase the author attempts to find out the special usability issues through heuristic evaluation and think aloud. The issues are concluded to eight groups and most issues affect users' searching stage of using online help such as concept is not easy to be recognized etc. Finally the author adopt the cooperative design method to improve the usability issues concerning with searching and put forward some new functions according to user habit to satisfy user requirements, such as glossary, searching scope etc. After that listening lab is conducted to validate the high-fidelity prototype and results show that the prototype improves the user satisfaction at a great extent.Through the usability study of the online help system of Microsoft Office 2003 Word the author conclude the pervasive usability issues of online help products. Also the author finds that there are more and more requirements about multiplicity, flexibility and free control, through which we can foresee the direction of online help development. As the results of the study shown modify to usability issues and adding new functions make online help's using flow more perfect and searching efficiency is greatly improved. Therefore, the conclusion can be widely used in the design and development processes of other online helps and it has a great significance in improving the usability and user experience of online help.