Methodology I: Task Analysis

Abstract

Task analysis (TA) is a useful tool for describing and understanding how people perform particular tasks. Task analyses can be used for several purposes ranging from describing behavior to helping decide how to allocate tasks to a team. There are several methods of TA that can be used to describe the user’s tasks at different levels of abstraction. We describe some of the most commonly used methods and illustrate the use of TA with some example applications of TA. TA is widely used but when using TA there are considerations to keep in mind such as the fact that many approaches require an initial interface or specification, and that many do not include context multiple users or ranges of users. These considerations help describe where and when TA can be successfully applied and where TA will be extended in the future.