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An evaluation of using programming by demonstration and guided walkthrough techniques for authoring and utilizing documentation

Published: 22 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

Much existing documentation is informal and serves to communicate "how-to" knowledge among restricted working groups. Using current practices, such documentation is both difficult to maintain and difficult to use properly.In this paper, we propose a documentation system, called DocWizards, that uses programming by demonstration to support low-cost authoring and guided walkthrough techniques to improve document usability.We report a comparative study between the use of DocWizards and traditional techniques for authoring and following documentation. The study participants showed significant gains in efficiency and reduction in error rates when using DocWizards. In addition, they expressed a clear preference for using the DocWizards tool, both for authoring and for following documentation.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2006
    1353 pages
    ISBN:1595933727
    DOI:10.1145/1124772
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    Published: 22 April 2006

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    Author Tags

    1. documentation authoring
    2. guided-walkthrough
    3. programming by demonstration

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    April 22 - 27, 2006
    Québec, Montréal, Canada

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