- Author:
- Piyawadee Sukaviriya
Context-sensitive animated help uses simple 2-dimensional animation to demonstrate how to perform a computer application task within the context in which help is requested. To automatically generate such help, descriptive information about an application, its interface design, and runtime context must be available to a help generation system. This dissertation addresses how to represent domain-independent help knowledge, which is suitable for automatic generation of procedural animated help. The dissertation also presents the design of a help architecture which allows help and user interface components to share runtime contextual information. Within the environment this architecture supports, help can be tailored specifically to the user's current context.In this dissertation research, a knowledge representation model is developed that sufficiently details an application interface for both animated help generation and user interface control purposes. The knowledge model captures the semantics of application actions, their relationships to user interface components and functionality, and interface details required to support accurate demonstrations that are adaptable to current contexts. A model for a runtime support architecture with an integrated help component is also developed, in which help and user interface components share a common knowledge base to generate context-sensitive animated help automatically at runtime and to assist the management of use interfaces. The animated help component has access to contextual information, and employs artificial intelligence planning techniques to tailor animation scripts specifically to current contexts. Based on these models, a system called Cartoonist is implemented to demonstrate the usefulness of both the knowledge representation and the software architecture models.
Cited By
Bharat K and Sukaviriya P Animating user interfaces using animation servers Proceedings of the 6th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, (69-79)- Sukaviriya P and Foley J Supporting adaptive interfaces in a knowledge-based user interface environment Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Intelligent user interfaces, (107-113)
- Palmiter S and Elkerton J (2018). Animated demonstrations for learning procedural computer-based tasks, Human-Computer Interaction, 8:3, (193-216), Online publication date: 1-Sep-1993.
- Sukaviriya P, Foley J and Griffith T A second generation user interface design environment Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (375-382)
- Sukaviriya P, Isaacs E and Bharat K Multimedia help Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (433-434)
Index Terms
- Automatic generation of context-sensitive animated help
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