Building effective help systems: modelling human help seeking behaviour

Abstract

This paper proposes that the help systems provided for current software applications do not adequately support the natural help seeking behaviours of human beings. To test this hypothesis, theories about help seeking behaviours were used to design an evaluation instrument. This instrument is applied to the help systems of some well known software applications. The findings suggest that these systems do not match natural help-seeking behaviours, with deficiencies particularly in support for adaptivity, communications and creativity.