Online Help Desk: Design document

Online Help Desk: A Performance Support System for New Users

Martin Ryder

Storage Technology Corp

Oct 24, 1994

The affordances of the Internet for information access are abundant, powerful, and constantly improving. But the effectiveness of these resources is limited to a smaller population of veteran users. The tools are scattered and undocumented. Many resources assume prerequisite knowledge, and are out of reach for new users. The "Online Help Desk" is a performance support system (PSS), designed to reduce the gap between optimal system usage and actual usage by the larger user population.

The emphasis of a PSS is on cognitive tools, not training. The "Online Help Desk" brings together the most practical resources (documentation, tools, and databases) to support new users in the task of information access and other productive goals. While this facility supports learning and understanding about the network, it is strictly a performance aid and not a training environment. The utility can point users to information in support of technical understanding, but the primary goal of the resource is to provide users with the shortest path to the desired performance objectives.

In conjunction with the "Online Help Desk" are prosthetic tools designed for the local UCD community. Makepage is a utility that allows new users to create a template for home-page development without requiring prerequisite skills in unix and html authoring.

The Target Community

"Online Help Desk" is designed for a specific user group with a defined set of performance goals. The target population is the student community of the University of Colorado at Denver. The majority of these users are adults enrolled in a professional or graduate program at the university. Their assumed motives are professional and scholarly rather than recreational. The majority of these users are not technically enclined, but most have basic keyboarding skills and exposure to common computer applications, specifically word processing. Most users have had prior experience with online database utilities such as the CARL system. Only a small minority of users have prior experience in a UNIX environment.

The User Hardware Environment

Ouray and carbon, the local login servers, are accessible from vt-100 terminals on the second floor of the North Campus building. They are also accessible remotely via modem from any personal computer with standard communications software. At the present time, graphics applications are not supported except by direct network attachment. Most users have access only to text-based resources from ouray and carbon.

User Performance Goals

The overall goals for student online access involve the ability to engage actively within local and virtual communities toward the social construction of public knowledge. Specifically, students will utilize online resources in order to:

I. Engage in public dialog over issues of scholarly and professional import.
II. Exploit the [archives, forums, tools, data bases, reference materials, and other] resources that comprise a public knowledge base.
III. Contribute [articles, monographs, bibliographies, original source materials, research data, tools, references, and other] information of value to the public knowledge base.
IV. Provide consulting and collaborative services to communities of learners, scholars and practitioners.

These goals are enabled by the following set of skills

A. Exchange electronic correspondence. (I and IV)
B. Locate individuals and public forums drawn together from specific points of interest. (I and II)
C. Locate information resources pertaining to a specific topic. (II)
D. Find specific information within a document or data base. (II)
E. Generate and edit information for public consumption. (III)
F. Transfer and retrieve information from remote sources. (II, III and IV)

These skills are enabled by the following tools and tasks:

1.  Use lynx or unix commands to:
        a.  navigate within a directory structure (C,D,F)
        b.  list the contents of a directory (D,F)
        c.  copy, move, and delete files (F)
        d.  display the contents of a file (C,D,F)
        e.  print a file (E,F)

2.  Use a mail utility [such as pine] to:
        a.  read mail messages (A)
        b.  compose mail messages (A)
        c.  send correspondence (A)
        d.  forward correspondence (A,E,F)
        e.  forward ascii files (A.E.F)
        f.  forward binary files (A,E,F)
        g.  save correspondence (E,F)
        h.  delete messages (F)
        i.  create mailing lists (A)

3.  Use a text editor [such as pico] to:
        a.  generate a text file (E)
        b.  edit a text file (E)

4.  Use a web browser [such as lynx] to:
        a.  browse hypertext documents (B,C,D)
        b.  navigate the world wide web (B,C,D)
        c.  locate specific newsgroups (A,B)
        d.  post news articles to newsgroups (A)
        e.  search for information within a document (D,F)
        f.  evaluate self-generated hypertext documents (E)

5.  Use network search engines to:
        a.  locate people (B)
        b.  locate information resources (C)

Design Description

"Online Help Desk" is a menu-driven hypertext environment which provides documentation, tools and other supports related to the above-listed tasks. While it provides ample unix support documentation, the unix system is not the focus of this help utility. Rather, the focus is on the macro environment beyond the local unix system. It includes the gopher resources, usenet and world-wide web utilities as the user would encounter them in a seemless environment. This object-oriented focus is illustrated in the main menu:

Menu Selections:

new user support: This section contains answers to the immediate questions that may confront new users: My erase key is not working! How do I abort a command in process? How do I log off? Can I dial into the system from my p.c. at home?

user interface: This section is important for new users, if not immediate. The Online Help Desk introduces the lynx browser and encourages users to become familiar with it. Lynx is an exellent interface for this application. It was specifically designed for new users at the University of Kansas. The deliberate application of cognitive engineering in lynx hides many of the details of system navigation, allowing users to focus on objects rather than procedures and syntax. Lynx is well equipped with cognitive tools including bookmarks for hypertext navigation and keyword search capabilities within all retrieved documents. Commands in lynx are intuitive and command descriptions are immediately available with the press of the question mark (?). Besides a mail utility and a text editor, lynx is the only interface environment most users will require to perform all of the above-listed tasks.

mail: This section pulls together the best available documentation on the net to support three mail packages (pine, elm, and mail) installed locally. Where possible, hypertext documents are utilized in order to facilitate the user in search of direct answers to specific questions. Users who learn to use the search key capabilities in lynx will also have the ability to focus on specific topics within flat text files.

unix tutorials: On the Internet, there is an abundance of well-developed hypertext references for unix users. The best of these were pulled together and placed in this section. Users are advised that this section is for reference only. The requirement for unix expertise is greatly mitigated with the use of the lynx user interface.

text editors: Like the section on mail, this section pulls together the best available user documentation for the editors (pico, vi, and emacs) installed on the local systems.

hardware: This section is designed to address user questions about modem setup, terminal access and access to printers in the computing center on the second floor of the North Campus building. As other hardware issues emerge, they can be easily accommodated in this seciton.

world wide web: This section is purely informational, though hypertext links can actually demonstrate the enormity of the web if the user elects to pursue them.

internet: Another purely informational section. Special care was taken to include the most accurate, well-written, and authoratative sources.

usenet: This section provides documentation and much more. It gives users direct access to the 5,000+ online news groups. Lynx enables full access to the usenet community with the ease of a hypertext browser. The keyword search capabilities in lynx enable the user to locate a specific newsgroup from a list of several thousand. Users can access articles within a newsgroup with the ease of a hypertext link. There is no need to encumber new users with other news readers such as tin or rn. This section also provides documentation to support the process of posting articles with lynx.

In addition to the actual news groups, Online Help Desk provides immediate access to comprehensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) archives. New users are often reprimanded for not consulting FAQs before posting common questions to news-group forums. But rarely are new users supported in the task of locating and accessing the appropriate FAQ archives. Such access normally requires skills involving ftp (file transfer protocol). But here, the process is immediate and trouble free with the available pointers and the hypertext capabilities of lynx.

An additional feature (from Monash University in Australia) allows users to consult recent archives of many newsgroups. This facility maintains archives up to a month for hundreds of news group bulletin boards.

Listservs: The process of locating, subscribing to an interest group, unsubscribing, and searching through listserv archives is fully documented here. Multiple listserv indexes are provided to assure that determined users can locate a desired interest group. Many of these are searchable indexes. The others can be manipulated with the embedded search capabilities in lynx.

search engines: This section provides multiple tools for searching varied database environments. Each of these tools is self-documented and additional search strategies are provided to the user. The collection of search tools includes the ability to scan:

World Wide Web home page documents
Gopher directories
The files within gopher directories
ftp directories
The files within ftp directories
Usenet newsgroup titles
Usenet FAQ archives
The contents of usenet postings
Listserv titles and descriptions
Listserv archives
hytelnet indexes
whois databases

The utilities included in this section are among the most powerful tools on the net for accessing information. Like library research, the ability to find valuable information quickly is a skill that requires practice. However, a comprehensive set of tools and a suggested set of strategies can support new users with sophistocated research capabilities on the net.

authoring online documents: This section is an introduction to hypertext authoring and the html standard for document development. Multiple documents and tutorials are offered from the best known resources on the net. In addition, there is a section supporting local users with the process of creating, testing and debugging html documents within a user's home directory. The aim is to support users as they get acquainted with this mode of information development and on-line publishing.

glossary: The glossary is really a set of glossaries with searchable indexes. Tens of thousands of words, including technical terms, acronyms, jargon and slang are available for lookup within this resource.

Summary

The Online Help Desk is more than documentation. It is a comprehensive set of supports including tools, database resources, and strategies within reach of new users. While it was specifically designed for new users, this resource can provide a sophisticated support system for experienced users as well.

The effectiveness of this resource for new users depends upon the manner in which it will be accessible to them. At the present time, any user on ouray and carbon can access the resource with the following command:

       lynx gopher://ccnucd/h0/UCD/dept/edu/techinfo/help.html

From the standpoint of new-user support, this is not acceptable. The expression is intimidating and the slightest typographical error would cause access failure. A script has been written in the developer's home directory which currently allows users on ouray to access the utility with the following command:


        /student/mjryder/bin/aid

On carbon, the command is:

        /home/staff/mryder/bin/aid

This is an improvement, but for new users it is still combersome. Users can simplify it with an alias, but it is unrealistic to expect beginners to create their own unix script to call up the resource. It is possible for new users to access the path to the developer's directory so that subsequent attempts can be carried out with the simple command "aid". This path strategy again requires some knowledge of unix, and is unacceptable from performance support criteria. Furthermore, the path is only temporary since the developer is a consultant with a limited tenure.

The recommended solution would be to include the above lynx script in a publicly executable directory such as /usr/local/bin. Ideally the script would have the name "help". This would enable new users to access the utility simply on the basis of intuition. Such a solution requires the cooperation of the system administation staff in the CINS department. .. .