Task Analysis Homework

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Task Analysis Homework

• Section 5

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Task Analysis HW Grades

• Overall, very good
• Examples from excellent task analyses
• Some confusion
• Difference between an interview and a contextual
  inquiry (CI)
• Learning tasks v. Performance tasks

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Examples of Excellent Task Analysis

• Plan
• To observe dining etiquette,
• simulated dining situation with a menu, food, a
  server, a dining partner
• instructed participant to do certain tasks during
  the dinner situation
• Observations
• Transcripts of answers to each interview question
• Full description of actions and dialogue (of
  interviewer and participant) associated with each
  task
• Each observation is numbered for referencing
  within analysis
• All observations (actions, dialogue) are
  together, in order enables understanding of
  their context

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Examples of Excellent Task Analysis

• Analysis
• Succinct summary statement introducing paragraph
  topic and argument.(Participants perform
  several tasks to help them study art history.)
• Argument 1(First, participants need to record
  class information for later access.)
• Example 1 from observations (cite)(Participant
  1 did this by taking notes in class lecture.)
• Example 2(Participant 2 did this by
  downloading lecture slides from class site.)
• Argument 2(Second, participants want to find
  information to further their knowledge.)
• Sentence summarizing paragraph (optional)

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Interviews vs. Contextual Inquiries

• Interview ? you control
• Quizzing this is not asking users to do a task
  as they would naturally it is a task you control
• CI ? participant controlsOr at least there is
  enough openness for
• Natural environment
• Unexpected behavior

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Interviews vs. Contextual Inquiries

• Interview observations
• Include primarily dialogue
• CI observations
• Must include actions dialogue (best together
  dont split up)
• Observations proof for your analysis
• To analyze tasks, you must have observations of
  user doing the task

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• Questions about Interviews vs. CI?

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• Two types of CI tasks in your HW
• Learning
• The user would like to know how to determine the
  outcome of a poker hand.
• The user needs to learn to read the music
  notation, and translate that to the hand
  positions, and the keys that they should press on
  the piano.
• Performance
• The user wants to format a paper.
• A person wants to find a place to live.

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• Several types of interfaces may result

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• Many project have tasks worded as performance
  tasks
• Some of you thought learning to do this was
  implicit (need to reword)
• Some of you intended to support performance
• Two options
• reword performance tasks to be learning tasks
• implement performance tasks instead

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• Reword
• Task wording ? performance tasks
• User wants to format a paper.
• Reword to be a learning task
• User want to learn to format a paper.
• This is easy no penalty, no need to resubmit.

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• Implement performance tasks instead
• User want to format a paper.
• Interface enables user to format a paper.

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Learning vs. Performance Tasks

• With your group, look at each of your tasks and
  determine if you meant it to be a learning or a
  performance task. Reword if needed.
• (Groups whose topic is within the learning
  domain do not need to do this art history, math
  for kids)