Helping users to use help: improving interaction with help systems

The content management, IA, and documentation communities have written extensively about the structure and content of help systems, as well as on help delivery mechanisms. But even if content and IA are perfectly suited to users’ needs and tastes, a help system may still fail to engage users, because they don’t interact with the help system in the first place. This workshop focuses on effective integration of help systems into users’ environments. It will help us understand how users access help systems, so we can improve the initial interaction between users and help systems.