Fear and Loathing of the Help Menu: A Usability Test of Online Help    

A usability test of online Help for a Windows-based database-searching application showed that test subjects avoided the Help menu for as long as possible. When finally obliged to use Help, they read the information carelessly and bailed out quickly, even without finding the necessary information. On the other hand, the test subjects did use dialog-box Help and pop-up Help for tools. The article identifies three qualities and two requirements that are apparent in dialog-box Help and pop-up Help for tools but which are not shared by the Help menu. It suggests that these qualities and requirements may make any Help access method that contains them attractive to users. It then goes on to examine dialog-box Help, pop-up Help for tools, and several other Help access methods, that use these qualities and requirements.

Grayling, Trevor. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Usability>Online

If We Build It, Will They Come? A Usability Test of Two Browser-based Embedded Help Systems    

The big problem with database-searching applications is that the user receives little feedback. Consider, for example, novice users starting to use Microsoft Word. The users want to right-justify a paragraph of text. Their efforts, either successful or unsuccessful, will be immediately apparent on the screen: The paragraph is either correctly justified or it isn't. However, a good-quality or a poor-quality search query used over a large database may retrieve 5,000 records, whether good or poor. How is the chemist to know whether the search query was effective and efficient? That is, how does the chemist know that the search query retrieved all and only the relevant records?

Grayling, Trevor. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Usability>Programming