Principles of Task Analysis and Modeling: Understanding Activity, Modeling Tasks, and Analyzing Models
Abstract
Task analysis identifies user goals and tasks when using an interactive system. In the case of users performing real-life work, task analysis can be a cumbersome process gathering a huge amount of unorganized information. Task Models provide a mean for the analysts to organize information gathered during task analysis in an abstract way and to detail it further if needed. This chapter presents the benefits of using task models for task analysis with a practical view on the process for building task models. As task models can be large, it is important to provide the analyst with computer-based tools for editing task models and for simulating them. In this chapter, we illustrate the presented concepts with the HAMSTERS notation and its associated eponym tool.