USER ASSISTANCE HAS COME A LONG WAY from mere stand-alone help files. We now find abundant instances of its being consistently woven into applications and, thus, the user’s experience; it is no longer a document separated from the user’s task. Accordingly, user-assistance designers need a design language that deals with user context and system interactions more directly—more in line with the way user-interface designers have come to work. An approach that has gained popularity with user-interface designers is that of pattern language as a way to derive and describe design solutions. This article introduces pattern language concepts and shows how they can be applied to user assistance to provide a common language for discussing design strategies that integrate user assistance and user experience.
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