ToolClips

Part of the Learning Project

One of the main learnability challenges associated with complex software applications is learning to use the tools which the application provides. Advancements in the technologies that we use provide new opportunities to provide the necessary assistance. In particular, video assistance has become widespread. However, such assistance is generally in the form of long video tutorials, accessed externally from the software application. With the ToolClips project, we augment traditional tooltips with videos, giving users rapid, contextual, and within-application access video clips, to help understand how to use the associated tools. Our research on ToolClips has been published and is also being transferred into Autodesk products.