[Sigia-l] Differentiating between a 'wizard' and 'help'

[Janna Hicks DeVylder]

Hi all,

Any thoughts about this would be appreciated. I'd be glad to summarize for
the list.

Background:
One of the projects I'm working on is a website that is used primarily as a
portal to get to other sites. The other sites are subscription-based. A
user's primary task on this portal site is to access the other sites (their
time on the portal should really be limited). A secondary and vital  task,
however, is the management and distribution of the subscriptions to other
users. These task requirements are driven mostly by business and partner
needs, while we have made efforts to match the lingo of the tasks back to
the user's offline realm. Because these management tasks may not appear to
be the logical first step to a new user (and we don't want them wasting time
trying to figure out tasks that are truly secondary to their goals), we're
creating a wizard to move users through tasks. The wizard could also be
available throughout the site, so a user could elect to use it at any point
to complete tasks (users could also initiate tasks outside of the wizard).
We also have proposed having a help section.

Questions:
What is (or is not) the difference between the wizard and help? Currently,
the wizard actually allows users to input information and complete tasks,
while help is purely informational.
How could these two sections work together?
Should one be more conversational than another?
How could we help users determine which to use?

As I type, I feel I am making this much more complicated than it needs to
be...thoughts?

thanks,
Janna