Learning a word processing system with training wheels and guided exploration

A Training Wheels interface creates a reduced functionality system intended to prevent new users from suffering the consequences of certain types of common errors when they exercise system functions and procedures. This has been shown to be an effective training system design for learning basic text editing functions [4]. We extend this result by examining the extent to which training wheels learners can transfer their skills to interaction with the full-function system. The experiment reported here indicates that training wheels subjects were better able to perform advanced full-system editing functions than subjects who were trained on the full system itself.