Task orientation and tailoring of interactive software explanations

Describes a planning approach solution to the software understanding problem that focuses on the user's task and expertise. This solution is implemented in a software explanation system as follows. First, user questions about software artifacts are studied and the most commonly asked questions are identified. These questions are organized into a question model, and procedures for answering them are developed. Then, the patterns in user questions during the performance of the task are studied, and these patterns are used to build generic task models. These task models, along with a user model, are used to generate explanations that are tailored to the user's task and expertise. In addition, the task models allow the system to provide explicit task support in its interface. An evaluation experiment with human subjects was conducted to determine the effects of this explanation tool on software understanding. The tool is found to improve software understanding and to reduce the task performance time.