Supporting Remote Real-Time Expert Help: Opportunities and Challenges for Novice 3D Modelers

Authors

Parmit K. Chilana, Nathaniel Hudson, Srinjita Bhaduri, Prashant Shashikumar, Shaun Kane

Research Lab

Parmit Chilana

Research Themes

In-context Help

Software Learnability

Abstract

We investigate how novice 3D modelers can remotely leverage real-time expert help to aid their learning tasks. We first car-ried out an observational study of remote novice-expert pairs of 3D modelers to understand traditional chat-based assistance in the context of learning 3D modeling. Next, we designed MarmalAid, a web-based 3D modeling tool with a novel real-time, in-context help feature that allows users to embed real-time chat conversations at any location within the 3D geometry of their models. Our user study with 12 novices who used both MarmalAid’s real-time, in-context chat and an external chat tool to seek help, showed that novices found the real-time, in-context chat to be more useful and easier to use, and that ex-perts asked for fewer clarifications, allowing the novices to ask more task-related questions. Our findings suggest to several design opportunities to utilize and extend the real-time, in-context help concept in 3D modeling applications and beyond.

Citation

Parmit K. Chilana, Nathaniel Hudson, Srinjita Bhaduri, Prashant Shashikumar, Shaun Kane. "Supporting Remote Real-Time Expert Help: Opportunities and Challenges for Novice 3D Modelers." In 2018 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), pp. 157-166. IEEE, 2018.

@inproceedings{chilana2018supporting,
  title={Supporting Remote Real-Time Expert Help: Opportunities and Challenges for Novice 3D Modelers},
  author={Chilana, Parmit K and Hudson, Nathaniel and Bhaduri, Srinjita and Shashikumar, Prashant and Kane, Shaun},
  booktitle={2018 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)},
  pages={157--166},
  year={2018},
  organization={IEEE}
}