[Sigia-l] Instructive Interaction vs. Contextual Help vs. Print Documentati on

[John O'Donovan]

Boniface said:
> Thus, animation or
> movie tends to be unsuitable.

Instructive animation is one of the techniques that delivers instructive
interaction though. I've always found it very successful in helping users
understand what to do next, or how to achieve goals. Quite often
illustrating key workflows and choices provides all the contextual links
that the user needs to figure out everything else.

But I do think there is still a lot of work to do in fully integrating this
more closely with user tasks and having the show part of the instruction
less of an orthogonal process and more integrated into the UI. Animation
then becomes a great way of illustrating affordance.

In practical terms, another issue is that a lot of my projects (especially
the larger ones) are becoming COTS (Common Off The Shelf) integration
projects. Working within the limitations of a range of standard components
can be a problem when you want to be very adaptive and responsive to UI
requirements but animation can be a great way to help graft this on.

Cheers,

jod

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Boniface Lau" <boniface_lau at compuserve.com>
To: <Sigia-l at asis.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2003 12:51 AM
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Instructive Interaction vs. Contextual Help vs. Print
Documentati on


>
> > From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On
> > Behalf Of John O'Donovan-INTERNET
> [...]
> >
> > The interesting part of this area is how to integrate the
> > instruction.
>
> Another interesting part is that instructive interaction requires a
> delicate balance on grabbing user attention. The right balance means
> the instruction is pretty much invisible to users who don't need it.
> But users who need the instruction would notice it. Thus, animation or
> movie tends to be unsuitable.
>
>
> Boniface
> ------------
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