TutorialPlan: Automated Tutorial Generation from CAD Drawings

Abstract

Authoring tutorials for complex software applications is a time consuming process. It also highly depends on the tutorial designer's skill level and experience. This paper introduces an approach which automatically generates software tutorials using the digital artifacts produced by the users of a software program. We model this process as an optimal planning problem using software produced artifacts, software specifications and the human-computer interaction Keystroke-Level Model (KLM). We present TutorialPlan, an automated tutorial generator, which creates step-by-step text and image instructions from CAD drawings and helps users learn AutoCAD, a complex design and drafting software. In our tutorial generator, the optimal planning problem is represented and solved using DLV, a general Answer Set Programming (ASP) system. DLV offers a natural representation of both the problem and the heuristics needed to solve it efficiently. A user study shows that the tutorials generated by our system are comparable to those generated by experienced AutoCAD users.