Task analysis

What is it?

Task analysis helps you understand the tasks needed to achieve goals. It’s similar to customer journey mapping, value stream mapping, and as-is/to-be process mapping but focuses specifically on customer goals.

Why do it?

Do it when you need to understand the tasks required to accomplish a goal that will inform information and interaction design.

When to do it?

Use it to evaluate existing products or to brainstorm ideas for new products. It’s particularly valuable when you’re doing goal-driven product development.

How to do it?

• Grab a persona and a list of his or her goals (collected using customer research activities and persona development).

• Brainstorm about the persona’s motivations, pains, and so on. For each goal, make a list of tasks that the persona would need to do to complete them. Use sticky notes to record the tasks in case you want to change the order of the tasks.