Prompting, feedback and error correction in the design of a scenario machine

Abstract

The recent technical literature abounds with a variety of studies documenting and analyzing the problems people encounter in learning to use contemporary computer equipment. This has been a major focus of the recent work in our laboratory ([6], [9]). The project such work must entrain is the development of design approaches to these problems. We have been and are developing alternate designs for training manuals and for in-system training ([2], [4], [5], [7]). This paper is a report of work in progress in this area. We describe a design approach to in-system training referred to as the Scenario Machine, and describe some initial results from an empirical learning study of four scenario machines.