| Everyone, at one time or another has been frustrated by the assistance provided by software, despite the effort being put in the design and development of online help systems. One form of assistance or another is included in any type of software system. In fact, there are many benefits in providing support to the user when doing a task. This includes: increasing productivity, reducing training time, increasing worker autonomy, increasing the quality due to standardized work practices, knowledge capture and dissemination (Desmarais, Giroux et Larochelle 1997).; Many forms of computerized assistance exist: on-line help, on-line tutorial, collections of questions and answers, performance support systems etc.; and yet, human assistance is still required. The main problem with the existing approaches to computerized assistance is that they do not answer the immediate needs of users and context. From a recent usability study done on an optimally designed on-line help system (Grayling 2002), it has been observed that users tried practically everything they can in the software before using the on-line help facility. For instance, they went back to previous operations and tried to find other ways to get what they wanted.; The goal of this thesis is to establish a design approach to help systems that take into account the specific context in which the user may face. A user in need of assistance would usually like a prompt answer suited to the situation he is in and to his needs. The specific objectives of this thesis are: (1) Identify the adaptation process to the context and need of a user based on the analysis of the human assistance behaviour. (2) Develop an approach to computerized assistance based on human assistance analysis that answers the specific needs of users. (3) Design, implement and validate a computerized help system based on the proposed approach.; The thesis is organized as follows: It begins with a review of the literature on existing computerized help systems, which are mainly based on the traditional cognitive theory. This theory states that the knowledge can be seen as the processing of information, so that the assistance needs could be foreseen and integrated in a program. But since all the events that can occur cannot be foreseen, a processing plan cannot really be established in advance to answer every need. We rather propose to base our approach on the situated action theory, which states that the knowledge can only be interpreted by the context in which it occurs.; In order to better understand the way human assistance is provided, we did a review of empirical studies on assistance. Most studies made so far used a simulated environment with few subjects using single software well known to the advisor, which can have a significant impact on the assistance process. We thus conducted an empirical study as part of this thesis based on observations of human advisors faced with complex software problem requests in a large research institute in order to have a more realistic human-machine model of the assistance process. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
