Assist Users by Answering Their Questions (HI Guide)

Inside Macintosh: Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines / Part 2 - The Interface Elements: Chapter 11 - Language / Online Help Systems

Assist Users by Answering Their Questions

When users need help, they often have at least one question in mind. Users' questions fall into a number of distinct categories, and those categories call for different types of assistance. Provide different types of help for different categories of questions. For example, there is a clear distinction between the question "what is this?" and the question "how do I do this?" The first question asks more about the nature of an object or task while the second question requests instructions about performing a task. The ideal help system tries to support three categories of questions: procedural, descriptive, and troubleshooting. Table 11-2 gives examples of each type of question.

**Table 11-2 Categories of questions for help systems**
Category	Type of question
Procedural	How do I copy a paragraph?
Descriptive	What is an alias?
Troubleshooting	Why do extra characters appear when I print?

Balloon Help provides descriptive information for items that appear on the user's screen. The help system should augment these descriptions as necessary especially for items that do not appear on the screen or that require a more in-depth explanation.

Involving users in your product design process can help you identify the types of questions that your users may ask about your products--especially questions about tasks that users will want to perform. See the section "Involving Users in the Design Process" in Chapter 3, "Human Interface Design and the Development Process," for information about how to conduct user observations.

Showing users how to accomplish work should form the core of the help system. Once you have a set of user questions, you can organize the answers--and the ways to get to those answers--in ways that best serve your users.