Demandes d'aide procédurale: spécification des besoins d'utilisateurs novices

This paper presents a study of online help dialogues This paper presents a study of online help dialogues between novice users and human experts. This study is focused on the modelisation of the novice users actual information needs, taking into account the dynamic aspects of the activity. Our analysis revealed information needs that overstep the usual semantic definition of help information categories.Dialogue analysis results indicate that novice users request different types of information from the experts namely semantic, syntactic and pragmatic. These results suggest that the novices' requests for procedural information depend on the ongoing step of the activity cycle to fulfill the user's actual goal. This cycle includes the completion of the following steps: planning of an action, execution of the planned procedure/task, and assessment of the effects resulting from the carried out actions on the system's current state.The analysis of 10 help dialogues led us to define procedural help activity, in this specific interaction context, as a complex process involving the combination of several types of information. Using this specific pattern of help information should ensure most effective online help support.