Summary
In this paper, the authors aim to help beginner users of complex software to execute complex tasks in a simple way to help them build confidence and not lose interest in the software. The approach used as an extension to photoshop and collects instructions available in the community to build macros that can execute multiple steps to achieve an action or a goal. Users might use information available online, but they might get lost with the overloaded information available or choose a solution that is not efficient.
The approach offers suggestions to the users in the context of the current action to help them with executing the next desired action.
The authors asked the users to participate in two surveys to measure their confidence level of using photoshop application. The participants level of experience in photo editing software varied from beginner to expert and first survey showed that beginner users might lose confidence when there is no suggestion feature that can help on executing tasks. The second survey was about DiscoverySpace system which showed that beginner users gained confidence when they use a tool that can help them with executing complex task to achieve their goal.
Reflection
I found the approach used by the authors to be very interesting. Providing suggestions to new users to execute different tasks to achieve a goal can help beginner to be successful in their job or on the project that they are working on.
Using information and instruction available online to build the list of tasks that are required to achieve a certain action is a nice implementation and can be used in lots of domains.
The idea of using recommendations based on the context of the available action is more effective than the help options available on the application that might give too much information and links that make it difficult to find the solution especially for beginner users.
I think this approach can also be used for new hires or new students to offer templates for a certain actions. Often new hires and new students need to execute multiple steps in order to achieve a goal and failing on these tasks might cause multiple issues that prevent them from having a smooth onboarding experience. I also think that this approach can be used in software development to help new programmers to use template to design new systems or to solve coplex problems. Stack overflow has solutions to thousands of programming issues and can help on building macros or templates to solve a specific issue.
Questions
- The approach used by the authors can help beginners on execute a set of tasks to accomplish a goal in photoshop, can we use a similar approach in a different application or in different domain?
- Can you use a similar approach in your project?
- Do you think that this approach can also help experts on using these systems especially when a new major feature is released?
