Pro-Active: Designing a genuinely helpfu...

Microsoft’s Clippy showed the world that a computer can use context clues to determine when a person is writing a letter, but that it probably  should  keep its digital mouth shut. In this talk, we’ll discuss designing a query tool that offers contextualized suggestions (and even warnings) to help users write accurate and performant queries quickly… without making them want to force quit in fury —whether they're less-techy Excel folks or committed command line coders. Over the course of this fast-paced and fun session we’ll  incorporate learnings from Don Norman, Cliff Nass, and other HCI luminaries (using case studies from self-driving cars and a variety of software examples, both cutting-edge and totally familiar), as well as lessons from user research on beta releases geek out about predictive text (incorporating syntactic, semantic, and social clues)  explore how to provide suggestions or interventions at just the right time and in just the right way to maximize utility and minimize frustration and much more…