Task Analysis Walkthrough

1
Task Analysis Walkthrough

• Jason Hong
• September 24, 1997

2
Review

• POET
• What is an affordance?
• What is a mapping?
• Other design criteria?
• Fitts Law
• How do time, size, and distance relate to each
  other?
• Model Human Processor
• What is the average cycle time?

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Task Analysis Walkthrough

• Email Reader as an example
• Team up with neighbor
• Room 606 Soda _at_ 3 PM
• Carnegie Mellon HCI
• Want to go to Graduate School?
• Want to learn more about HCI?
• Want to learn more about Disney?

4
Who Are the Users?

• Anyone with access to computer
• Computer skills newbie to guru
• Backgrounds Literate, all kinds
• Work habits all
• Physical characteristics May matter (vision,
  hearing, etc)

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What are the Tasks?

• Send mail
• Receive Mail
• Delete
• Save ( as other formats)
• Print
• As Record
• Spell check

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What are the Tasks (cont.)

• Mailing lists
• Formatting
• Notification - You have mail!
• Forwarding
• Organization
• Filtering
• Encryption / Compression / Authentication
• Forms / templates

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How is it Learned?

• Documentation (online help)
• Other people (over the water cooler)
• Experimentation
• Demo

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Where is it used?

• Home
• Office
• Labs
• Airports
• Everywhere!!!

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How Often?

• Varies
• From Wired in to never

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Relationship between Users and Data

• Personal or business
• Shared or private
• Remote or local
• Security
• No kooks get or read your mail
• Authentication
• Anonymous
• No spam

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Relationship to Other Tools?

• Physical devices
• Spell checker
• Hypertext
• Address Book
• Attachments / Cut and paste
• Almost any application

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Other Constraints?

• positive IQ
• Screen size and graphics
• Possible other interfaces (speech or pen)
• Bandwidth
• Disk space
• Cost of reading email
• Rapid delivery

13
Error Conditions?

• Disconnection
• Cannot connect (Error 404)
• Lose mail
• Couldnt send mail (loss of service)
• Bounced mail
• Mail didnt arrive
• Invalid addresses
• Cant type right

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Error Conditions?

• Wrong command
• Email too big
• Problems with authentication