Modeling task experience in user assistance systems

Abstract

One of the major issues for user assistance systems consists of "providing help at an appropriate level". In this paper we analyze the problem of modeling task experience -a prerequisite for provisioning adequate help. In contrast to level-based approaches we propose an ontology-based model, which allows fine-grained modeling of task experience using the concepts of the task domain as granules. The model is semantic in the sense that it allows to take advantage of the relations between concepts to provide novel semantic services and interactions. We present the SACHS (Semantic Annotations for a Controlling Help System, a semantic help system for a spreadsheet-based financial controlling system) software as an exemplary application of the proposed task experience model.

Knowledge Representation

“…Their shapes (e.g., rectangle, oval, and diamond) are specified in ER, but their names and the cardinalities of relationships are specified by the data modeler. (Brachman & Schmolze, 1985), CLASSIC (Borgida, Brachman, McGuinness, & Resnick, 1989), Algernon (Crawford, 1990), and SACHS (Kohlhase & Kohlhase, 2009).…”

Semantic transparency in user assistance systems

“…Additionally, we can catch a glimpse of the different variants of generated help texts on the more detailed explanation level for the same cell. These content variants result from a semantic interaction service called "framing" (see a detailed description in [14] and a light-weight one in [13]). In a nutshell, SACHS enables the user to choose from a palette of frames for a cell (and thereby a topic) in question.…”

“…If for instance the underlying formula for cell range [G9 : H9] is built up according to the prognosis function "1 st order Lagrange interpolation", then a user might be interested in the concrete values resulting from applying a different function like the "2 nd order Lagrange interpolation". For a detailed introduction of this semantic interaction we refer to [14] or to a shorter description in [13]. Note that the establishment of the new semantic object 'functional block' allowed the software designer to discover innovative interactions by exploiting its (semantic) transparency.…”