Dynamic Online Help for Increased User Experience

Abstract: De facto standard of automation equipment today involves that all configuration toolsexist in a Microsoft Windows environment. These tools usually include static helpfiles with text and images, in order to facilitate system configuration. Staticinformation rarely returns an accurate picture of a problem, and may also be kept toogeneral to supply the user with requested information. This calls for improvement ofthe technology by investigating possibilities to present relevant information. The actual system of help files used in most applications consists of a Static Help FileSystem, where the help file is shown a Standard Viewer. Each help file consists of aunique file, such as a “.chm” file (when using the Windows Help Viewer) that containsthe HTML information (including text and images) that this viewer will display. Thissystem allows the use of conditional tags in the HTML content files (that are thencompiled into one “.chm” file) using parameters that are already predefined byundesirable settings. A dynamic system where only relevant information is given depending on whichproduct is active removes the need for poor and ambiguous description and thus,gives the correct help instantly. In the context of Help, Dynamic Help Content refersto different Content Objects that contain the relevant information for differentconfigurations or “modes” that suit different users’ request. This information isassembled when requested by the user according to its requirements defined by theUser Profile metadata, which defines the User Profile itself. Since the systems that are currently available in the market do not allow the Help Filedeveloper to define the Content Metadata (the data that describes which content isrelevant for each user profile), a new Dynamic Help System that presents animprovement over the actual Static Help System and that allows to this character todefine the Content Metadata is implemented in this thesis. A new prototypeapplication has been implemented with the .NET Framework, and it is in charge ofmatching the User Profile metadata with the Content metadata or, in other words, ofexecuting the dynamic rules defined by the Help File developer and of displaying thefinal help file to the user. The new system was tested with many cases and it proved to allow the help filedeveloper to change contents, keywords and graphical profiles of an entire Set ofHelp Files, which is compressed as a “zip” file to make its distribution easier. Thiscapacity of personalization represents an improvement of the user experience andusability over the actual Static Systems, being more useful by displaying the rightinformation to the user, creating the help file on the fly while matching the UserProfile Metadata with the Content Metadata.