CS160: Interface Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation, Spring 2005 Task Analysis Page 1 of 5 Task Analysis The objective of this assignment is for you to determine the following by performing a contextual inquiry: • What the users will do with the interface your will be building, • Where the users will use the interface you will be building, • When the users use the interface you will be building, and • How the users will use the interface you are building By completing this assignment, you will gain experience in performing a task analysis. This will include the planning and conducting contextual inquiry interviews, documenting your finding, analyzing your findings, and writing your results in a report. Tasks There are several tasks you will need to perform for this assignment. 1. Develop plan for contextual inquiry. This plan needs to include documentation of: • The project introduction you present and the interview you conduct at the beginning of the contextual inquiry, • The key tasks that you expect to ask the participant to perform during the contextual query, • How you plan to capture the information that will enable you to answer the analysis questions below, and • The wrap-up conversation at the end of the contextual inquiry. 2. Perform and document the contextual inquiry on three (3) participants (who are not in this class). Note that you may (and are likely to) change your plan based on the results of first and second contextual inquiry. Though it is good to stick to the plan you developed, it is more important to gather meaningful information. If your plan does not appear to work, you will need to keep going with the interview and gather as much information as possible. The results of such an interview will be used to change the plan that you will use for subsequent interviews. Please briefly document what you learned from each contextual inquiry and how your plan changed and turn this in with the rest of the homework materials. 3. Analyze the results of the contextual inquiries and write-up an analysis. Your analysis should specifically answer the ten (10) questions below. 4. Pick six (6) tasks out of your analysis that you will uses for the basis of the interface design. Two (2) tasks should be tasks that the users consider difficult to perform, two (2) should be of moderate difficulty, and two (2) should be easy. Write-up these tasks in detail. Analysis Questions In performing the contextual inquiry, you should find answers to the following ten (10) questions: 1. What tasks do users now perform? 2. What tasks are desired?CS160: Interface Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation, Spring 2005 Task Analysis Page 2 of 5 3. How are the tasks learned? 4. Where are the tasks performed? 5. What is the relationship between user and data (personal, private, public, meaning to the user, etc.)? 6. What other tools does the user have to complete the tasks? 7. How do users communicate with each other regarding the tasks? 8. How often are the tasks performed? 9. What are the time constraints on the tasks, if any? 10. What happens when things go wrong while performing tasks? The contextual inquiry should be planned in such a way that you will get answers to the above questions. Be careful that you have planned to gather information that will enable you to answer these questions. Deliverables There are four (4) deliverables in this assignment. You will need to provide write-ups on each of these. 1. The plan for the contextual inquiry. Includes documentation of changes made to plan after each of the first two contextual inquiries. 2. Observational notes from the contextual inquiry interviews. 3. The analysis of the contextual inquiry (answers to the analysis questions above). 4. The six (6) tasks, described in detail, that you will use as the basis of the interface design. Plan for the Contextual Inquiry The write-up of the plan for the contextual inquiry needs to contain the following: 1. The talking points and questions you plan to ask participants. Instead of a full script for the interview, you are asked to provide talking points. Talking points are a list (sometimes with details) that describes the items which you plan to talk about during some conversation or presentation. This list needs to be clear enough that you (and for purposes of this assignment, the instructor or teaching assistant) easily understand and are reminded of what you plan to talk about. For example: • Introduce an electronic wallet. • Ask participant’s help. • Have the following questions to ask: a. Question 1. b. Question 2. • Will ask participant to perform task. • May ask questions while user performs task. 2. A list of the key tasks that you plan to ask participants to perform during the contextual inquiry. Note that the list includes tasks, not directions.CS160: Interface Design, Prototyping, and Evaluation, Spring 2005 Task Analysis Page 3 of 5 3. A description of how you plan to gather information during the contextual inquiry. Describe the method you plan to use to record information during the interview. You may use recording equipment to record the interview. You need to describe the instruments you will use to get the actual and/or recorded information onto paper. For example: We will have two observers during the contextual query interview. The first observer’s job will be to write down each object the participant touches and looks at during the interview and describe how the user appears to be using the objects. The second observer’s job is to make notes on the participant’s dialog during the interview. For each observer we have created a write-up sheet which is labeled with the sections of the contextual inquiry. (List the sections.) 4. The talking points for the wrap-up at the end of each interview. These need to include thanking the participant, how the participant can see the results of your project, and how to keep in contact. 5. A description of how the plan changed between the different interviews. The plan that you include in the write-up should be the plan for your final interview. It is very likely that you will have changed your plan between each interview. Describe the changes to your plan and why the change was added. For example: • Between the first and second interview we added task X to the list of tasks we ask the participant to perform because the first
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