Creating contextual help for GUIs using screenshots

  • Authors:

  • Tom Yeh;Tsung-Hsiang Chang;Bo Xie;Greg Walsh;Ivan Watkins;Krist Wongsuphasawat;Man Huang;Larry S. Davis;Benjamin B. Bederson

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA;University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 24th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

Contextual help is effective for learning how to use GUIs by showing instructions and highlights on the actual interface rather than in a separate viewer. However, end-users and third-party tech support typically cannot create contextual help to assist other users because it requires programming skill and source code access. We present a creation tool for contextual help that allows users to apply common computer skills-taking screenshots and writing simple scripts. We perform pixel analysis on screenshots to make this tool applicable to a wide range of applications and platforms without source code access. We evaluated the tool's usability with three groups of participants: developers, in-structors, and tech support. We further validated the applicability of our tool with 60 real tasks supported by the tech support of a university campus.