Honorable Mention - 1998 EPSS Design Contest

Planet SABRE v2.0 Guidance System EPSS
The Sabre Group

An integrated, globalized EPSS designed for travel agency users of the world’s first full-featured GUI travel booking tool.

Purpose

The Guidance System is the first phase of a series of end user support initiatives proposed and developed by the SABRE Education and Training Solutions group (part of The SABRE Group, an AMR subsidiary). It was designed to support international users of Planet SABRE 2.0, our proprietary, revolutionary GUI booking tool (scheduled release: 3Q98) effectively and efficiently.

Our challenge was to design a new software product with integrated intrinsic and extrinsic user support functionality. In Planet SABRE’s initial release, user acceptance was relatively low, a variance from projections partially attributed to lack of user confidence in and satisfaction with training. Consequently, our post-implementation support costs rose drastically, as shortcomings in the software design and training implementation drove higher help desk and field training and support costs.

Our primary goals in developing the Guidance System were to increase product acceptance/customer satisfaction, and to reduce the need for our users to request other, more expensive support options, such as the help desk or field personnel time. To achieve these goals, we emphasized on-task, just-in-time performance support.

The initial development model included the prescriptive CPR Content-Media Modelã , which enables our developers to make decisions about what content is most appropriate for the medium in which they develop user support functionality, thereby eliminating redundancy and ineffective content-media combinations.

The electronic components to the Guidance System include:

• Planet SABRE Tutors – Microsoft "Wizard"-like procedural prompts that dynamically display as the user walks through a best-practice scenario. Advantages: Institutionalizes best practices, eliminates inappropriate multimedia procedural instruction, significantly reduces other, more expensive user support (e.g., Help desks, field training representative on-site visits, account executive visits, etc.). See Figures 1 through 3, below.

Figure 1: The Tutor’s initial display describes its own use.

Figure 2: The Standard Air Tutor Index provides an overview of the institutionalized best practice.

Figure 3: The actual Tutor windows prompt new users through critical and infrequent tasks until learning decreases dependencies on the Tutor.

• ToolTips – Provides user input for unlabeled icons and buttons, as well as task prompts to compensate for known usability issues. Dynamically display when an object has focus for a half second (Figure 2).
  
• Figure 3: ToolTips dynamically display when an object has focus, enabling the Training department to anticipate and intervene in potential usability issues.
• Enhanced Error Messages – "Translates" cryptic and encoded host system messages into user-actionable language. States the error condition, user-actionable instructions, and valid examples, as appropriate.
• Procedural and context-sensitive online help – Traditional online help features to augment "just-in-time" Guidance System features.
• CyberTour multimedia demonstration (non-interactive) – a marketing demonstration that provides potential users with the "What’s In It For Me?" information; emphasizes long-term benefits of the product from an agency owner-manager perspective.
• QuickStart multimedia interactive tutorial – Establishes the GUI’s metaphor and high-level task initiating cues. Also tracks student progress and prescribes remedial lessons.
• Access to the Guidance System components has also been significantly re-engineered for usability. The Welcome to the Guidance System dialog box appears automatically on sign-in to the system (Figure 4), and offers our users the opportunity to select a multimedia training option or a short interactive tutorial that covers use of the Guidance System’s features.

Figure 4: The Welcome to the Planet SABRE Guidance System dialog box.

The previous version of Planet SABRE, like most software products produced by our organization to date, included simple online procedural and context-sensitive help. It was normally augmented by extensive (as well as expensive and inefficient) classroom instruction.

Users were also often provided with multimedia training, but the work environment (taking customer calls on the phone, primarily) was not conducive to dedicated, uninterrupted training time, so despite the instructional soundness of the multimedia instruction, we found the usage rates to be unacceptably low.

We segment our users into veteran and novice user categories. Both groups have a sound knowledge of the travel industry and general booking processes. Their significant differences relate to the depth of their knowledge and experience with our previous text-based host interface.

Our analysis of Planet SABRE users, their work environments, and processes validated that this audience is particularly suited to electronic performance support. For example, we found the following characteristics in the travel agency value chain indicate a need for an EPSS:

Competition and a dynamic business climate is increasing the need for improved customer service.

An increasingly complex marketplace that requires expanded knowledge and significantly higher productivity targets.

Agents are computer-dependent to perform their value-added tasks.

A large percentage of the work is "knowledge work."

Far more knowledge is required to perform the work than workers can absorb during training.

Factors contributing to high job performance are known and understood.

Job competence does not depend on sensory communication, such as touch or body language.

Common-sense reasoning is not the job’s most important component.

The agencies experience high employee turnover.

There is a large gap between the best and worst job performers.

Agents use complex and changing job information to do their jobs.

Agents don’t have quick access to information, because it is stored in many different forms.

Most managers and job performers know what to do once they have the right information in hand.

Agents sometimes reside in small, geographically separated groups.

Employees at different locations have different degrees of access to knowledge.

The agencies are introducing new hardware and software systems.

The agencies are moving from mainframe (host) to client/server applications.

Generalized training courses do not meet the specific needs of different audiences.

Training budgets and time available are being cut.

More or longer training programs do not improve significantly performance.

The agencies focus on on-the-job training.

Costs of producing and distributing paper-based documentation are very high.

Increasing the number and quality of documentation doew not significantly improve performance.

Users are more accustomed to online documentation.

At the time of this writing, the Guidance System has not been released; it has, however, undergone informal testing and is projected to increase customer satisfaction, decrease more expensive support requirements, decrease learning curves, and will cost significantly less than our previous software support strategies.

By eliminating ineffective content-media combinations, we have already saved $500,000 in training and documentation development. We estimate that we will reduce help desk calls by 20% and classroom training by 50%; our total savings in direct costs alone will approach $1 million in the first year.

More importantly, early informal focus groups indicate that the Guidance System will drive significant improvements in product acceptance, customer satisfaction, and user productivity.