A task analysis looks into how effective each part of your business processes are and if they are working well together to achieve the same goal. Curating your business model based on the results can deliver a better user experience, better understand user behaviors, and smoothen your operation flow.
At Business2Community we’ve prepared this comprehensive guide to utilize task analysis for your business growth. In this article, we’ll walk you through conducting a task analysis and reading the results so you can reach your expectations easily.
Task Analysis – Key Takeaways
- A task analysis reveals how a user completes different tasks to achieve a goal, helping deliver a better user experience by improving the less user-friendly parts of the operations.
- This technique breaks down a task into smaller, manageable steps for users to follow.
- Due to its limitations, you should always adopt further analyses to get the most comprehensive results.
What Is a Task Analysis?
A task analysis refers to the process of observing a user finish a designated task and understanding how well each task contributes to achieving the goal. This tool helps decision-makers learn more about the way users use a system, product, or service.
It breaks down a goal into smaller, manageable tasks and studies the tasks performed by users to refine interface design and deliver a better user experience (UX).
Through observation, UX designers and project managers can map out how users are interacting with complex tasks, determining the most appropriate strategy to guide users in navigating their system/services.
To create a task analysis, it’s important to first learn about the differences between a task and a goal.
For example, imagine you are a kindergarten teacher trying to teach pupils how to make a jelly sandwich. There are several methods to choose from to accomplish that goal. You can ask students to follow video instructions prepared by you or show them how to do it during a face-to-face lesson.
The goal is for them to make a sandwich by themselves, not watch the video or watch you make one. The video or face-to-face lesson is a task they must complete in order to accomplish the goal. A task analysis enables you to see how useful each task is in guiding users to reach the ultimate goal.
Following the steps given by you allows students to achieve their goals more easily and allows you to identify and solve problems as they arise.
Who Needs to do a Task Analysis?
The purpose of task analysis is to identify how well/poorly your users are handling the tasks. By dissecting the steps involved in achieving a goal, designers can create a more suitable layout for users to follow.
This method penetrates most sectors and is beneficial for UX designers, instructors, and decision-makers to polish the experience and allocate resources more effectively.
Regardless of the industry you are in, there are goals to focus on. There is a sequence to follow from start to finish. Using this technique lets you reach the end goal smoothly and improve your objective for the next quarter.
How to Complete a Task Analysis
Creating a task analysis involves taking several individual steps to analyze how the tasks support achieving the end goal. To make things easier, here is a breakdown of the 8 steps involved in completing a task analysis.
Step 1: Identify the Goal
To begin a task analysis, you need to have a goal. What do you want to achieve? For example, you are a web designer wanting to create a new online booking process for a restaurant’s website. You want to enable the business to take bookings through the site and social media. Your end goal is for users to complete a booking at any time of day without having to place a call.
Step 2: Identify the Tasks
Outlining the tasks helps you understand the complexity of them and how to make them manageable for learners. Tasks involved in booking a table online can be finding the booking button, choosing the date and time, and getting a booking confirmation, for example.
Step 3: Break Down the Task into Multiple Steps
Having one main task or several main tasks is not enough. You need to break down the task into multiple tasks so they are more achievable and manageable. Sticking with website booking form, the first step is to find the booking call-to-action or booking page, followed by multiple steps to choose a date and time and add any notes. The last step is to enter contact details and receive a confirmation.
With a broken-down process, you can support customers better by analyzing the weaknesses in each given task. You can address the difficulty they face promptly.
Step 4: Choose the Right Analysis Type
Performing the right task analysis helps you complete the analysis in a meaningful way. The two common analysis types are hierarchical task analysis and cognitive task analysis. The former aims to understand how users complete an objective by following visual guidance or smaller subtasks while the latter aims to access the knowledge a user has and their way of thinking.
A hierarchical task analysis is more suitable for the table booking form example.
Step 5: Collect Data
Data collection is integral to task analysis. Analyzing a complete data set gives you the most accurate results. You should aim to collect information from as many people from your target pool as possible. You can collect data by recording the successful booking rate and using heatmapping tools, in our example here.
Step 6: Analyze the Data
Now, you need to see how the actual figures compare to your desired figures. It gives you an idea of how good the instructions are and areas to work on. The information collected should be time-specific so you can compare performances/statistics over a period of time when necessary.
Step 7: Review the Process and Potential Harm/Ineffectiveness
After reviewing the data, you can find weak areas in the process that most users struggle with. Perhaps many people wanting to visit the restaurant are struggling to see how to start the process, or the calendar section is hard to navigate – then, you need to highlight the issues.
Step 8: Share Results with Your Team for Updates
Finally, you can share the results with your teammates to discuss possible ways to refine the process. The results may suggest creating a social media video to help users navigate the website. Your team can work together to look for more appropriate ways to address the problem and even change the site layout to make the CTAs clearer. The team can use rewards as an incentive for a user to follow instructions, such as discounts for successful online bookings.
Task Analysis Examples
After learning about how performing a task analysis can assist a user in accomplishing a goal, it’s time to dive into a few real-life examples so you gain a clearer idea of how this technique can nurture growth for your company and deliver higher-quality services.
Example 1: Use Cognitive Task Analysis to Help Your Users Learn a Concept
Let’s say you run a tech firm and you are trying to guide your new hires to work with the latest programming technologies. Determining their knowledge levels informs you how to set reasonable expectations. You need to make sure they understand the concept and can perform the task.
You can incorporate forward chaining into the training process and use a cognitive task analysis to see how users perform after studying the materials. This method can create a better understanding among staff about their proficiency and knowledge so they can be more efficient at work.
Example 2: Hierarchical Task Analysis to Improve Daily Task Processes
You are a designer for an assisted living home and you are creating actionable methods to assist caretakers in the facilities to teach residents skills like washing hands to enhance their daily living quality. You can use a task analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of the current teaching process and how to improve the experience for residents.
Example 3: Use Job Task Analysis to Analyze Employees’ Abilities
A job task analysis breaks down the job specifications in detail and sets measurable tasks to measure employees’ performance. It is common for a business owner to perform this technique regularly so they can identify key skills vital to the business and calculate the value users bring to the company.
You need to describe the duties and expectations in the physical environment. For example, you run a factory and require your workers to be able to lift a minimum of 50kg of cargo. Through observation, you can filter for quality candidates and find the right person to promote or hire.
How to Adjust a Task Analysis
A complete task analysis involves 8 steps. It can be intimidating if you are asked to make adjustments. Don’t worry. Since a task analysis doesn’t involve complicated calculations and formulas, adjusting the process is rather simple.
For instance, you want to change the start sequence of a task from opening the tap to getting the soap in a hand-washing exercise. All you have to do is observe the consequences to see how your changes impact the success rates of people learning this skill.
The same procedure applies even if you are changing the entire task. Let’s say you are a therapist and you initially used interviews to divide patients into groups. Now, you want to distribute online questionnaires instead to save costs and increase efficiency.
Even though the whole task has changed, the process of gathering information remains the same. You can analyze how well the questionnaires can group patients to decide which method is more cost-effective while maintaining a high accuracy rate.
Whether you have to change a task or a goal, updating your task analysis is simple. Most businesses perform an updated analysis regularly to ensure the results continue to reflect their business reality.
Limitations of Task Analysis
Although a task analysis offers insights into your design process and how your users are adapting to it, it lacks consideration of various aspects. You need to be aware of its several limitations when conducting the analysis.
It Only Studies Individual Users
The principle of a task analysis assumes each task is completed by a single user, rather than a group. Therefore, this technique is only useful in studying individual behavior. In commercial settings, many tasks are carried out by more than one user, limiting the usefulness of this tool.
Since this technique assumes each user finishes the task independently, if you are conducting group exercises where users have to work together to complete different tasks, you may need to use other analytical tools like workflow analysis according to your needs.
It Can be Expensive To Collect Data
Depending on your scope of study, your cost to perform task analysis can be greater than its benefits.
You may want to use this tool to find out which subtask is underperforming in order to enhance the user experience. You will have to allocate resources to observe your target group throughout the entire process.
Sometimes, the improved performance is marginal compared to the huge costs incurred in the study. Companies have to decide wisely when is an appropriate time to execute a task analysis.
It Doesn’t Offer Solutions
Even if you’ve found some tasks incompetent in achieving the goal, a task analysis doesn’t tell you how to adjust them. Decision-makers have to use other tools to get a clearer idea of how to make necessary changes to boost performances.
You can incorporate this study with other analytical tools like a PESTEL analysis to link every factor and the outcome/goal to know how they influence each other and locate cost-effective solutions. Adopting multiple analyses builds a more well-rounded business proposal and minimizes risks when executing business strategies.
The Value of Task Analysis
A task analysis is vital to the design process. UX/UI designers, business owners, and project managers can conduct this analysis to understand how each user completes a task, curating a model best suited for the audience.
You can analyze how each small task contributes to completing the goal and if you should adjust your strategies or utilize other tools to deliver a more fruitful experience. It facilitates the design process and enhances the efficiency in achieving the user’s goal.
To perform a task analysis, follow the 8 steps in this guide. The results will send your business down the right path and save resources for your production while refining the user experience.