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南，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，现在还包括年幼的儿童。第一个主题是创建和评估旨在通过利用其他教程追随者的贡献和意见来改善用户访问和使用基于网络的教程的技术。第二个主题是根据从基于网络的教程和其他网络文档中挖掘的命令分组，研究向用户提供应用内的、与上下文相关的命令建议的可行性和实用性。第三个主题是从幼儿的角度来探讨软件复杂性的问题，幼儿是一个快速增长但未得到充分研究的技术用户群体。*拟议的研究将采用以用户为中心的设计和界面原型方法、机器学习和自然语言处理技术的有针对性的应用(与领域专家合作)以及与人类受试者的混合方法评价。我提议的研究的结果将是新颖的界面设计和原型，它们改善了使用功能丰富的软件的体验，以及经验验证的设计指南，这些指南综合了从与最终用户评估我们的解决方案中学到的经验教训。**

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.****The research I propose focuses on three main themes. The first theme is to create and evaluate technologies designed to improve users' access to and use of web-based tutorials by leveraging contributions and opinions of other tutorial followers. The second theme is to examine the feasibility and utility of providing users with in-application, contextually relevant command recommendations based on command groupings mined from web-based tutorials and other web-documentation. The third theme is to explore the problem of software complexity from the perspective of young children, a rapidly growing but understudied population of technology users. ****The proposed research will be done by applying user-centred design and interface prototyping methods, targeted applications of machine learning and natural language processing techniques (in collaboration with domain experts), and mixed-methods evaluations with human subjects. The outcomes of my proposed research will be novel interface designs and prototypes that improve the experience of using feature-rich software together with empirically validated design guidelines that synthesize the lessons learned from evaluating our solutions with end users.**