Sheepdog: learning procedures for technical support

Technical support procedures are typically very complex. Users often have trouble following printed instructions describing how to perform these procedures, and these instructions are difficult for support personnel to author clearly. Our goal is to learn these procedures by demonstration, watching multiple experts performing the same procedure across different operating conditions, and produce an executable procedure that runs interactively on the user’s desktop. Most previous programming by demonstration systems have focused on simple programs with regular structure, such as loops with fixed-length bodies. In contrast, our system induces complex procedure structure by aligning multiple execution traces covering different paths through the procedure. This paper presents a solution to this alignment problem using Input/Output Hidden Markov Models. We describe the results of a user study that examines how users follow printed directions. We present Sheepdog, an implemented system ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: IUI
• Authors: Tessa A. Lau, Lawrence D. Bergman, Vittorio Castelli, Daniel Oblinger
• Keywords: Hidden Markov Models, IUI 2004, Procedure, Software Engineering, Technical Support Procedures