Task Analysis Homework

1. Task Analysis Homework Section 5

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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

6. Interviews vs. Contextual Inquiries • Interview observations • Include primarily dialogue • CI observations • Must include actions & dialogue(best together: don’t split up) • Observations = proof for your analysis • To analyze tasks, you must have observations of user doing the task

7. Questions about Interviews vs. CI?

8. 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.”

9. Learning vs. Performance Tasks • Several types of interfaces may result:

10. 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

11. 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.

12. Learning vs. Performance Tasks Implement performance tasks instead • “User want to format a paper.” • Interface enables user to format a paper.

13. 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)