The Information Designer's Palette of Interactive Techniques Part 2 of 2 News & Views Feature Article

by Craig Marion Craig Marion is an information designer building his skills in performancecentered software design. He is currently working on a team at Strohl Systems that is using a combination of interactive instructions and visual representations to guide users through tasks that previously relied on complex dialog boxes. Originally published in News & Views May 2000 issue. Copyright 2000 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

This is an abridgement of a larger paper (Marion, 2000) that provides graphic illustrations of the classifications defined in this article and many more links to examples. Part 1 of this article was printed in the May 1999 issue of News&Views. In Part 1 of this article (Marion, 1999), I introduced the concept of interaction design and discussed its importance to information designers. In this continuation, I'd like to focus on how interactivity can be used to enhance user assistance. I've drawn together the ways that this can be done, cataloged them, and commented on their effectiveness. I did this because I believe that information designers need to acquaint themselves with these techniques so thoroughly that they come to regard them the way artists regard paints on a palette. When information designers apply information to software, they need to select the technique as consciously as they craft the content. My typology is based on a simple and fundamental distinction: that most assistance within software either explains something or helps users do something. This distinction lets us look at user assistance on a sort of continuum. I've called its outer boundaries-whether the information provides an explanation or helps users complete tasks-Explanatory Interactive Assistance and Interactive Performance Support. In between are ways to present information that does more than explain-it suggests or guides-but it doesn't enable users to complete entire tasks the way performance support elements do. I think that these techniques are best called Suggestive or Guiding Interactive Assistance. At one end of the Interactive Assistance Continuum (Figure 1), information is used to clarify options, what's going on, or what needs to be done. In the middle, it does something, suggests something, or offers corrective guidance. And at the other end, it contributes to the accomplishment of actual work. Figure 1. At one end of the Interactive Assistance Continuum, information is used to clarify options, what's going on, or what needs to be done. In the middle, it does something, suggests something, or offers corrective guidance. And at the other end, it contributes to the accomplishment of actual work. I'm proposing this typology as both an aid and a challenge to information designers. It's an aid insofar as it's helpful in clarifying choices and techniques. It's a challenge in that it asks information designers to look beyond an inward focus on information itself-on the clarity of its presentation and the accessibility of its organization-and to concentrate on its contextual appropriateness and usefulness. The value of information within software is a function of its effectiveness in enabling users to achieve their goals. Interactivity needs to be regarded as an attribute of information towards that end. Let's look, then, at each of these information types in turn. And let's consider each in light of how well it achieves integration into the work the software is being used to perform. Explanatory interactive assistance Explanatory interactive assistance presents information its authors think users want or need to know, or information they want them to know. It clarifies options, what's going on, or what needs to be done. It's the oldest form of interactive assistance, still the most prevalent, and falls into these classifications: interactive books online help systems popups rollovers moving and animated information audio, visual, and multimedia information Some readers may note that I didn't include hypertext as a category on this list. That's because it's such a basic element that it's used within many of the others. Interactive books In the late eighties and early nineties, mainframe applications that were originally documented on paper had this information placed online in book form. The books improved information accessibility through powerful search engines and were often linked to applications contextually, like help systems. At the same time, they were easier and cheaper to distribute and update than their paper predecessors. Interactive books have increased in popularity through the use of Adobe's crossplatform PDF format. The online guide that comes with Adobe Acrobat Reader (www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html) is a good example. Integration into workflow: Low. While information can be presented extremely effectively within interactive books, using them requires software users to break their workflow, switch from a doing mode to a research mode, find the information they're looking for, comprehend it, and then apply it. Online help systems From their earliest days as simple help screens summoned with the F1 key, help systems have provided help that was easier to access than going to a book. WinHelp, the system that runs under Windows, has dominated the online help arena for much of the Nineties. Its successor, HTMLbased help, has a very similar structure. Its great advantage is that its hypertext links can go out to the web as well as into a help system. Integration into workflow: Normally low. While some designers promote creative ways of integrating help systems into applications and their workflow (Zubak, 1999), most help systems force users to look information up. Moreover, as applications become more complex, it's rare that pressing F1 brings up just what the user is looking for. Rather, information needs to be sought through a table of contents or an index, read, and applied. Help systems of this type have the same limitations as electronic books. Popups Information can pop up within an application when the user satisfies a set of conditions the programmer has established. Error messages are the most common example. Status bar messages are another. Other information pops up at the user's request. With its Windows 95 help engine, Microsoft introduced a type of popup help called What's This? help. What's This? help could be evoked from the Help menu or by clicking a question mark in the upper right corner of the screen. The system would then go into help mode, the cursor would change to a question mark, and the user could drag the question mark to any object on the screen and click to see help for it. Integration into workflow: High when done well, usually medium. Popups can be an excellent form of user assistance in many situations. They can provide precisely the appropriate information, when the user requests it, without cluttering an interface. On the other hand, popups very commonly provide information that users perceive as irrelevant to the task at hand. And applications that offer popups for every element on an interface, many of which state the obvious, run the risk of having users ignore them entirely. Rollovers When information pops up as a result of moving the pointer over an area of the screen rather than clicking on it, it's called a rollover. Two of the earliest uses of rollovers were Microsoft's Tooltips and Apple's balloon help. Tooltips display explanatory messages when the pointer rests on a screen object. (Information displayed using the Title tag in HTML displays in a similar way.) Balloon help performs the same function as Microsoft's What's This? help, but it's easier to access since it doesn't require users to place the system in help mode. Applications such as Lotus Notes have adapted this approach in a Windows environment as well. Integration into workflow: High. Rollovers are an extraordinarily effective way of presenting information at point of need, and their potential is just beginning to be tapped. In the year I researched this article, improvements in their use and effectiveness were striking, outpacing all the other techniques. Moving and animated information Text, pictures, and any combination of the two can be made to move or be animated in a variety of ways. Movement can be initiated or controlled by users or controlled by the system. The simplest approach to moving information is having text scroll across a screen, as CBS Sunday Morning does each week when it has the word "Sunday" scroll across an otherwise stationary weather map. Information can also be made to change at intervals. Look at the current reviews at www.websidestory.com. Alternatively, users can control the display, as ABC News' The Century Timelines does effectively at abcnews.go.com/century/timelines/1910.html. Animated information presents a sequence of images in a timed sequence. Look at the explanations in Microsoft's Office 2000 tour at www.microsoft.com/office/features/ofc2000tour/default.htm. Integration into workflow: Varies. Systemcontrolled movement causes information to stand out or show changes. Usercontrolled movement can draw users into scenarios experientially. The value and success of these techniques depends on how well they're used and what they're used for. Sound, video, and multimedia Sound, video sequences that are more elaborate than simple animations, and the integration of multiple sensory dimensions are a final category of interactive explanatory assistance. In Microsoft Money 99 (when the CD is accessible), each time users go into a new section of the program they receive a brief audio description of what they can do there. Lotus ScreenCam (www.lotus.com/products/screencam.nsf) can produce interesting video explanations of computer displays by recording a sequence and letting comments be added afterward. The comments can be visual, audio, or both. Multimedia is the integration of text, graphics, video, animation, and sound elements into a multisensory experience. The most broadly used multimedia platform today is Shockwave. The Site of the Day Archive at www.shockwave.com/static/shared/search/ssod_archive/index.html contains many examples. Integration into workflow: Varies. It can be quite high, as when sounds are used to create an appropriate mood or to announce information briefly. Or it can require users to change from a doing to a learning mode to access information and present it with varying degrees of effectiveness. Suggestive or guiding interactive assistance Suggestive or guiding interactive assistance either demonstrates how to perform steps of a task or presents possibilities to users they may not be aware of. Do It help Do It help enables users to have a system perform a step or sequence of steps in a task for which they have requested assistance. A good example is Microsoft's Show Me help. When a user clicks the Show Me arrow in the help system, the system performs the action. Integration into workflow: Usually medium, sometimes high. Microsoft's Show Me help is perfectly integrated into a help system, but getting to it often requires a break in the workflow. The same type of assistance integrated into the workflow within the user interface would be fully integrated. Anticipatory goal assistance Another form of suggestive assistance determines a user's probable goal on the basis of antecedent actions and then displays assistance towards attaining that goal. Microsoft's Office Assistant operates on this principle. Integration into workflow: Uneven. Sometimes anticipatory popups display too much information, obstructing performance of tasks, and sometimes they're intrusive. When well implemented, though, this type of assistance doesn't disturb workflow and helps users accomplish their goals. Corrective guidance Corrective guidance provides intelligent feedback to enable users to meet established criteria or achieve a declared goal. Intuit's TurboTax provides a good example. When a user makes a mistake, the system provides feedback in a much more effective way than standard error messages, which typically appear in a message box that must be closed before an action can be performed. Instead, TurboTax validates input when users tab to the next field, and if the input doesn't meet established criteria, displays an error message in the form of a tooltip. Integration into workflow: High. Corrective guidance is fully integrated into workflow, enabling users to do everything necessary to complete an entry or a step in a task. Interactive performance support Performance support-help in getting work done-doesn't need to be interactive. Sometimes a quick reference card or instructions embedded in an interface are all that's needed. Making these elements interactive doesn't necessarily enhance their effectiveness. It can diminish it. On the other hand, interactive elements used appropriately can frequently make performing work easier. Wizards guide users through the performance of simple tasks. Cue cards and coaches help them with navigation and the performance of more complex tasks. And interactive instructions can provide greater assistance than both of these and guide users through the completion of tasks with minimal effort. Interactive instructions are most effective when they are integrated into intuitive applications that are designed to optimize human performance. Wizards Wizards step users through the completion of tasks that have clear structures. They're fine for relatively simple tasks with linear structures. Since many tasks are linear, they're frequently the desired form of user assistance. Integration into workflow: High. But wizards are limited in what they can do. Cue cards Cue cards are displayed on a portion of the screen (usually a column on the right) of the main application. They structure tasks and provide step-by-step guidance towards accomplishing them. The tasks they support can be linear or involve branching. Cue cards can also include links, launch actions, and sometimes communicate with the application and customize instruction based on this communication. In this way, cue cards can serve as a customized tutorial. Integration into workflow: Medium to high. Medium when they provide a set of easily accessible instructions, high when the instructions interact with the application. Coaches Coaches provide greater versatility and provide broader support than both wizards and cue cards. They assist in tasks that aren't necessarily linear and follow and guide users rather than just presenting instructions. A good example is the coach that Lawson Software developed for purchase and inspection at www.epssinfosite.com/contest97/lawson.htm. Integration into workflow: High when well done. Coaches make complex applications much easier, but not as easy as applications designed not to be complex in the first place. Interactive instructions Interactive instructions are the most promising category of interactive performance support. Their simplest implementation can be seen in the Dynamic HelpTM within WexTech's Help Xtender (www.wextech.com/ pr4hxoverview.htm). These instructions guide users through tasks by displaying different topics based upon the insertion point within a dialog box. The Macintosh Guide is more supportive, providing instructions oneatatime on the basis of completing actions in a task. (Hackos & Stevens, 1997, pp. 98105). More sophisticated still are implementations where instructions are embedded within the workflow rather than as part of a help system. An example is Strohl System's Planbook Interface (stc.org/region4/soc/46thconf/handouts/id2lcm/sld036.htm). Integration into workflow: High. This relatively unexplored area seems to me to represent the cutting edge of interactive performance support. Conclusion The importance of interactivity has been recognized by information designers for some time. In the February, 1999 issue of Contentious, a Webzine for writers who create content for online media, editor Amy Gahran published the results of her first reader survey. Under the heading "Topics to Cover" (www.contentious.com/articles/111/results6.html) she listed thirtytwo that the 401 readers who responded to the survey wanted to see in future issues and the percentage of readers interested in them. Number one, with 56%, was "the overlap between design, programming, and content." That said, there are no simple, outofthebox solutions for creating this overlap. While I've presented my typology of interactive assistance as a continuum, the value of one technique over another must always be determined by context. That's why a palette is a good metaphor for grouping the techniques. No colors on an artist's palette are "better" than other colors. Their appropriateness depends on the totality of the rest of the picture. The information designer's challenge (figure 2) is to select the appropriate interactive techniques and use them in concert with noninteractive techniques to provide the best support possible to enable users to attain their goals. Figure 2. The Information Designer's Palette of Interactive Techniques. The information designer's challenge is to select the appropriate interactive techniques and use them in concert with non-interactive techniques to provide the best support possible to enable users to attain their goals. The whole issue of making information interactive is particularly significant to documentation and development groups that rely on online help. Standard online help forces users to break their workflow and find answers to their questions. Variations such as embedded help and cue cards anticipate questions and often provide helpful task structuring. These variations are significant moves in the right direction, but they can only take integration so far. So long as user assistance is developed separately from applications and structured to complement them, it will never achieve its proper form as an integral dimension of unified products. So: information designers, take heart, read the handwriting on the wall, and continue to build your skill sets. As users discover the effectiveness of interactive assistance, they'll come to expect it, their expectations will drive its growth, and its growth will spawn new and more powerful techniques. It will also cause information design to be recognized as a dimension of software development that can no more be isolated than visual design and interaction design. It won't be too far in the future when software that requires help systems to prop it up will be regarded as primitive. Users will expect software to be obvious as a matter of course. And information designers, who understand interactivity and can integrate information into software to make its use apparent to its target audiences, will commonly be regarded as among the most valued members of the teams that build it. Bibliography Hackos, JoAnn & Steven, Dawn. Standards for Online Communication. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Marion, Craig. "Make Way for Interactive Assistance," www.chesco.com/~cmarion/PCD/MakeWayforInteractiveAsst.html. May, 2000. Marion, Craig. "What is Interaction Design and What Does It Mean to You?" News & Views, May, 1999. Zubak, Cheryl Lockett. "What Is Embedded Help? A Simple Idea, Really." News & Views, September, 1999.

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