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A unified approach to online assistance

Published: 04 May 1981 Publication History

Abstract

Many interactive computer systems have some form of HELP or assistance commands. Effective online assistance requires a well-defined framework that addresses the needs of both the end-user and the assistance provider. This paper presents such a framework, whose generality and usefulness come from an application-independent assistance processor and a highly structured database of assistance information. Major considerations are (1) the types of assistance interactive users need, (2) the data structures and relationships required to provide comprehensive assistance, (3) software architectures that encourage and support effective forms of assistance, and (4) the programming effort required to include and maintain online assistance. To make online assistance effective and economically feasible, the paper proposes a way to integrate assistance into other phases of the software life cycle.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
AFIPS '81: Proceedings of the May 4-7, 1981, national computer conference
May 1981
736 pages
ISBN:9781450379212
DOI:10.1145/1500412
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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  • AFIPS: American Federation of Information Processing Societies

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 May 1981

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  • (1989)The Content of Help Screens: Users versus DevelopersProceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting10.1177/15419312890330053433:5(390-393)Online publication date: 1-Oct-1989
  • (1985)Human Factors Issues of Manuals, Online Help, and TutorialsEmpirical Foundations of Information and Software Science10.1007/978-1-4613-2521-5_10(107-124)Online publication date: 1985
  • (1984)Online help systemsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/69610.35798527:2(126-133)Online publication date: 1-Feb-1984
  • (1982)Human Factors and User Assistance in Interactive Computing Systems: An IntroductionIEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics10.1109/TSMC.1982.430879412:2(102-107)Online publication date: 1982

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