User studies of an interdependency-based interface for acquiring problem-solving knowledge

This paper describes a series of experiments with a range of users to evaluate an intelligent interface for acquiring problem-solving knowledge to describe how to accomplish a task. The tool derives the interdependencies between different pieces of knowledge in the system and uses them to guide the user in completing the acquisition task. The paper describes results obtained when the tool was tested with a wide range of users, including end users. The studies show that our acquisition interface saves users an average of 32% of the time it takes to add new knowledge, and highlight some interesting differences across user groups. The paper also describes what are the areas that need to be addressed in future research in order to make these tools usable by end users.