Usability

Task Analysis involves learning about users' goals--what they want to do on a website--and how they work. It can also mean learning about specific tasks users must do to meet those goals and what steps they take to accomplish those tasks. Task Analysis focuses on understanding:

• what users goals are and what they actually do to achieve the goals
• what personal, social, and cultural characteristics the users bring to the tasks
• how users are influenced by their physical environment
• how users' previous knowledge and experience influence how they think about their work and the workflow they follow to perform their tasks

Task Analysis allows researchers to discover what tasks a website or application must support and helps determine the appropriate content scope. It also helps researchers decide what applications a website should include. Task Analysis can assist researchers in refining or re-defining the navigation or search to better support users' goals or build pages and applications that match users' goals, tasks, and steps.