Help Strategies and Their Effect on Graphical Icon Usage

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Table of Contents

• Credits
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Experiment
• 3. Results
• 4. Discussion
• 5. Conclusions
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Appendices

Abstract

An increasingly popular component of modern graphical human-computer interfaces are graphical command buttons. Studies have shown that graphical command buttons can enhance user productivity. However, two factors, the time required to acquire a working knowledge of the graphical command set and the need for frequent use to maintain the knowledge limit the effectiveness of graphical command buttons as a user interface strategy. This study attempts to quantify the effects of four types of help (balloon style, a mouse documentation line at the bottom of the screen, a help browser, and hardcopy documentation) on the ability of novice users to acquire a working knowledge of a graphical command set. The study did not find any significant difference (based on the anova and manova tests) between the four treatments.

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