Is “tip-of-the-day” good? [closed]

Answer 1

I really only like the idea of a "tip of the day" if it is displayed when I can't do anything else anyway. For example, when the program is loading a large file. Suppose it has to load some large amount of data when the program is first started. Along with the "loading" splash screen, show a small tip, and have it disappear when the program starts. It's simple, unobtrusive, and can sometimes be very helpful to some users.

I hate to bring up "World of Warcraft" as an example in a programming discussion, but it uses this technique when you first login. Here is an example loading screen. Along with the loading bar and a full screen piece of art, it displays a small tip at the bottom of the screen. Usually these tips lead users to things they can explore further (such as a settings window, character customization tools, etcetera). For example, "Pressing ESCAPE will bring up a menu that lets you customize the the look and feel of the game".

Above all else: allow the user to easily close the tips and stop them from appearing each time. Make every key close the tip dialog when pressed. Have two buttons: "Close Tip" and "Close Tip and Never Show Again", or something to that effect.

Answer 2

IMO Tip of the day (popup) is only within programs that have a certain level of complexity, that you use frequently. So when you open the program you learn a new trick that will help you.

Usually people either like it or hate it, so definitely have an option to disable it.

What I'm worried about with the other type is that it will go unnoticed, you wont believe the areas of programs people never look at.

Answer 3

This might not be a direct answer to your question, but personally, I like the way StackOverflow handles this. The badge system essentially acts as a manual, rewarding users for discovering and utilizing the functionality it has to offer. Granted, this isn't really an option for most apps but it works beautifully for StackOverflow.

Answer 4

No - I dislike them pretty strongly. When I am starting a software application, I almost always have a specific task in mind. The TOTD just interrupts this flow and tries to get me to think about the software rather than the task.

Answer 5

Tip of the day can be good if it's

• non-modal, and never in the way
• has a "history" I can access
• is context sensitive to what I do

Unfortunately, the crappy initial Office implementation Clippy of has completely killed the last idea.

So IMO a good implementation would:

• Show up at startup
• Make "don't show at startup" the obvious choice
• Indicate (with an animation?) that TOTD is accessible from e.g. the toolbar
• MouseOver the toolbar icon would give the title/abstract of the "current tip"
• clicking on it would give me the tip, give forward/backward navigation through tips, link to "show all tips" in the manual.
• For a large tip database, a "related tips" link might encourage me to explore the manual

Context-sensitive

Later incarnations of Clippy were almost helpful actually: it was nonmodal and stayed out of the way not requiring interaction (the jumping around was attention-grabbing, though), and I remember a few instances where the suggestion was good - e.g. a keyboard shortcut for a command I had accessed repeatedly through the menu.

A simpler method could still be effective:

"Did you know... you can customize the print templates to look like a pie chart on LSD - the manual shows you how! [clickety]" on a print dialog

Did you know... I can remember your custom searches. Just click 'Goof/Barf/Hidden/Create Index for last Query' - and they'll show up in the 'Search' menu. They'll run much faster, too! whe working with a search/query form

Answer 6

Maybe put it in something like a "tool tip" (or down at the bottom like the OP described) and make it contextual. A few seconds after you change to a new mode it slides in some text about the current mode.

And YES make the OFF button easy to find!!!