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This article describes how virtual research environments (VREs) offer new opportunities for researchers to analyse open data and to obtain new insights for policy making. Although various VRE-related initiatives are under development, there is a lack of insight into how VREs support collaborative open data analysis by researchers and how this might be improved, ultimately leading to input for policy making to solve societal issues. This article clarifies in which ways VREs support researchers in open data analysis. Seven cases presenting different modes of researcher support for open data analysis were investigated and compared. Four types of support were identified: 1) ‘Figure it out yourself', 2) ‘Leading users by the hand', 3) ‘Training to provide the basics' and 4) ‘Learning from peers'. The author provides recommendations to improve the support of researchers' open data analysis and to subsequently obtain new insights for policy making to solve societal challenges.

End users positive response is essential for the success of any software. This is true for both commercial and Open Source Software (OSS). OSS is popular not only because of its availability, which is usually free but due to the user support it provides, generally through public platforms. The study model of this research establishes a relationship between OSS user support and available support tools. To conduct this research, we used a dataset of 100 OSS projects in different categories and examined five user support tools provided by different OSS projects. The results show that project trackers, user mailing lists, and updated versions have a significant role in gaining user support. However, we were unable to find a significant association between user support and documentation, as well as between user support and the troubleshooting guidelines provided by OSS projects., Comment: IEEE 15th Internatinal Conference on Control and Automation (ICCA), Edinburgh, Scotland, pp, 964-968, July 2019

Social support is an important resource for reducing the risks of stress and burnout at work. It seems to be particularly helpful for educational and social professionals. The constant and intense relationships with users that characterize this kind of service can be very demanding, increasing stress and leading to burnout. While significant attention has been paid to supervisors and colleagues in the literature, users have rarely been considered as possible sources of social support. The only exception is the Zimmermann et al.’s (2011) research, focused on customer support as a resource for workers’ well-being. This paper proposes the validation of the customer-initiated support scale developed by Zimmermann et al. (2011), translated into Italian and focused on educational services users (children’s parents), to measure the user support perceived by workers: the User-Initiated Support Scale (UISS). In Study 1 (105 teachers), which specifically involved educators and kindergarten teachers, the items and scale properties were preliminarily examined using descriptive analyses and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In Study 2 (304 teachers), the construct and criterion validity and scale dimensionality were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). In Study 3 (304 teachers from Study 2 and 296 educators), measurement invariance (MI) was tested. The EFA results from Study 1 showed a one-factor solution (explained variance, 67.2%). The scale showed good internal coherence (alpha = 0.88). The CFA in Study 2 validated the one-factor solution (comparative fit index = 0.987; standardized root mean square residual = 0.054). Bivariate correlations confirmed construct validity; the UISS was positively associated (convergent) with user gratitude, and not associated (divergent) with disproportionate customer expectations. Regarding the criterion validity test, the UISS was strongly correlated with burnout and job satisfaction. The analysis of MI performed on the Study 3 data confirmed the equality of the parameters of the covariance structure model between the two samples of kindergarten teachers and educators. This research study offers a useful version of a tool for measuring a crucial, but often ignored, protective resource for all professionals working directly with people (patients, students, and service users) that can represent important sources of well-being, directly or indirectly lessening the negative impacts of job demands.

Online Help to the Use of Software for General Public : Specific Design Issues and Potential Solutions. Despite long-standing research efforts, online help systems are as yet unable to satisfy the needs of novice users, and the users tend to ignore them. This article first demonstrates the necessity of online help in getting familiar with the use of new software, however intuitive it might be. The main issue addressed is whether online help systems are meant to remedy the flaws in the software design or to meet the actual needs of novices. The discussion involves both empirical results and theoretical arguments. In the second part, are analyzed the major specific difficulties with which are confronted the designers of online help in view of understanding why the critical online help is seldom used by novices., On peut faire aujourd'hui le même constat qu'il y a vingt ans, à savoir que les aides en ligne à l'utilisation des logiciels grand public sont rarement consultées par les utilisateurs novices. Pourtant, si les recherches sur l'aide en ligne suscitent moins d'intérêt depuis quelques années, les systèmes d'aide à l'utilisation des logiciels grand public commercialisés ont évolué considérablement au cours des vingt dernières années. Cet article prend d'abord position en faveur de la nécessité d'une assistance en ligne à l'utilisation d'un nouveau logiciel, dans le débat de fond qui divise la communauté scientifique en interaction homme-machine sur la question fondamentale suivante : les aides en ligne sont-elles un pis-aller, un simple remède aux défauts actuels de conception des logiciels et des interfaces utilisateur, ou bien sont-elles une assistance d'une nécessité absolue pour acquérir la maîtrise de l'utilisation d'un nouveau logiciel ? La discussion s'appuie à la fois sur les résultats d'études empiriques ou expérimentales et sur des arguments théoriques. La seconde partie analyse les obstacles et les difficultés spécifiques auxquels se heurte la conception d'aides en ligne à l'intention du grand public, afin de comprendre pourquoi les aides en ligne sont ignorées des utilisateurs en dépit de leur nécessité. Dans la dernière partie, les contributions potentielles de diverses approches à la résolution de ces problèmes spécifiques de conception sont analysées et discutées. Ces approches mettent en oeuvre des paradigmes et techniques d'interaction récents, dont la personnalisation statique et dynamique de l'interaction, l'aide en ligne contextuelle et de nouvelles formes de multimodalité qui intègrent la parole, en entrée et en sortie, aux modalités classiques d'interaction., Capobianco Antonio, Carbonell Noëlle. Aides en ligne à l’utilisation de logiciels grand public : problèmes spécifiques de conception et solutions potentielles. In: Intellectica. Revue de l'Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, n°44, 2006/2. Systèmes d’aide. Enjeux pour les technologies cognitives. pp. 87-120.

Article dans revue scientifique avec comité de lecture. internationale.; International audience; This paper addresses the issue of how to design online help that will really prove effective, accessible, and usable for all categories of users in the coming Information Society and, most of all, that will actually be used by novice users. The paper demonstrates the intrinsic necessity of online help and the actual failure of approaches claiming that "transparent" user interfaces eliminate the need for online support chiefly on the grounds that they encourage exploration. Empirical results in the literature or stemming from analyses of data we collected are put forward in the discussion. Based on a brief survey of the relevant literature, the major specific design issues that designers of online help systems are confronted with are presented, existing design approaches that might contribute to solving these issues are discussed, and a realistic short-term approach for improving the accessibility, effectiveness, and usability of online systems is recommended. Our recommendation is mainly based on a recently performed experimental study. These results led us to advise, at least for the near future, the design of noncontextual help systems rather than the implementation of dynamic adaptation to the current user's cognitive profile or the development of contextual help systems that generate the information content of help messages dynamically according to the user's current intention and goal. We assume that it is possible, within the framework of universal design principles, to significantly enhance the effectiveness and usability of standard noncontextual help systems, mainly by making the most of the recent advances in research on multimodal interaction, especially on the integration of speech into input modalities. || Cet article porte sur la conception de systèmes d'aide en ligne qui soient efficaces, accessibles et utilisables, et surtout, qui soient effectivement utilisés. Nous démontrons d'abord la nécessité des aides en ligne à partir des échecs des approches cent

This paper reviews the existing concepts of User Software Assistants for the management of information in the business processes. How important is user support for Human-Computer-Interaction by software tools? From the developer side what seems to be a mere option, has become for the user an important necessity. This holistic approach is relevant for the general business process, business process steps and the elementary business process steps.