Advising roles of a computer consultant

Several hours of advisory protocols from a consultant for Personal Computing were taped and analysed in terms of the role which the advisor played in the interaction. The advisor's role was determined by the user's initial approach and the advisor's perception of the needs of the user: informing the user about available information, defining terms or procedures, indexing into appropriate solution sources or methods for more complex problems or structuring a nebulous or poorly understood problem. A taxonomy of stages of information exchange is outlined and the patterns of alternation within each advisor role is described. We suggest implications of this study for the design of advisory systems.