Justin Matejka
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Ambient Help

Justin Matejka, Tovi Grossman, George Fitzmaurice
January 2011 · Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)

Abstract

In this paper we present Ambient Help, a system that supports opportunistic learning by providing automatic, context-sensitive learning resources while a user works. Multiple videos and textual help resources are presented ambiently on a secondary display. We define and examine a collection of design consideration for this type of interface. After describing our implementation details, we report on an experiment which shows that Ambient Help supports finding more helpful information, while not having a negative impact on the user's productivity, as compared to a traditional help condition.

DOI PDF

Figures

Figure 1. Structure of Ambient Help system. Main application monitor on the left, dynamically updating ambient help display on the right containing 5 videos and a web help page.
Figure 2. Ambient Help interface.
Figure 3. E
Figure 4. V
Figure 5c]. Bymouse button wone could deteused.
Figure 6. Setup of manual help condition.
Figure 7. Port
Figure 8. Average number of useful items found in each of the four task/help system conditions. (Note: Error bars report standard error).
Figure 11]. categories: (6, 7). The he ambient only 1 user
Figure 10. Number of cabinets drawn in the intense task. (Note: error bars report standard error)
Figure 11. Results for “The content of the extra monitor was helpful”.
Figure 12. Results for “The content of the extra monitor was distracting”.
Figure 13. Results for “The content of the extra monitor was distracting” during the ambient help condition in first vs. second task.
Figure 14. Results for “The content of the extra monitor hindered my productivity”.
Figure 15. Number of videos and help pages viewed and found useful in each of the help system conditions. (Note: error bars report standard error)
Figure 16. Results for “A system like <Ambient/Manual> could be useful”.

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/1978942.1979349,
 abstract = {In this paper we present Ambient Help, a system that supports opportunistic learning by providing automatic, context-sensitive learning resources while a user works. Multiple videos and textual help resources are presented ambiently on a secondary display. We define and examine a collection of design consideration for this type of interface. After describing our implementation details, we report on an experiment which shows that Ambient Help supports finding more helpful information, while not having a negative impact on the user's productivity, as compared to a traditional help condition.},
 address = {New York, NY, USA},
 author = {Matejka, Justin and Grossman, Tovi and Fitzmaurice, George},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
 doi = {10.1145/1978942.1979349},
 isbn = {9781450302289},
 keywords = {learnability, help, ambient system, understanding},
 location = {Vancouver, BC, Canada},
 numpages = {10},
 pages = {2751–2760},
 publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
 series = {CHI '11},
 title = {Ambient Help},
 url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979349},
 year = {2011}
}