Design and Evaluation of Computing Technologies to Promote Learning of Feature-Rich Software

功能丰富的软件应用程序，如照片编辑软件、文字处理应用程序和电子表格应用程序，每年有超过10亿人使用这些应用程序来完成与工作效率相关的各种娱乐任务。这些应用程序非常强大，部分原因是它们提供了数百(甚至数千)个命令和选项。与此同时，庞大的命令数量可能会使功能丰富的软件难以学习和使用。因此，在过去的30年里，促进对所需命令的有效访问以及提高用户学习功能丰富的软件的简易性的技术受到了人机界面和应用人工智能社区的相当大的关注。虽然这项先前的研究贡献了几项重要的技术和设计指导方针，但功能丰富的软件的格局继续发生重大变化，带来了许多新的挑战和机遇，包括：用户所依赖的帮助资源的分散化、关于命令到任务映射的基于网络的知识的日益可获得性、用户贡献的内容越来越受欢迎，以及计算机用户的日益多样化，现在还包括幼儿。

Feature-rich software applications, such as photo-editing software, word-processing applications, and spreadsheet applications, are used by over one billion people each year to accomplish diverse productivity-related and recreational tasks. These applications are very powerful, in part owing to the hundreds (or even thousands) of commands and options that they make available. At the same time, the sheer volume of commands can make feature-rich software difficult for individuals to learn and use. Consequently, techniques for promoting efficient access to needed commands and for increasing the ease with which users learn feature-rich software have received considerable attention by the HCI and applied AI communities over the past 30 years. While this prior research has contributed several important techniques and design guidelines, the landscape of feature-rich software continues to shift substantially, raising a host of new challenges and opportunities including: a decentralization of the help resources upon which users rely, the increasing availability of web-based knowledge on command-to-task mappings, the increasing popularity of user-contributed content, and the growing diversity of computer users which now also includes young children.