6.893 User Interface Design & Implementation
Fall 2003

GR1: Task Analysis

Due Wednesday, September 17, 2003, in class

In this group assignment, you will start the design of your term project by doing the following:

User analysis. Identify the characteristics of your user population, as we discussed in lecture. If you have multiple user classes, identify each one.
Task analysis. Determine the tasks of the problem you've chosen, analyze their characteristics, and answer the general questions about tasks we asked in lecture. Think about other questions you should ask that might be particularly relevant. You should find and analyze 3-6 tasks. If you can't find that many tasks in your problem, try drilling down to more specific tasks, and consider exceptional and emergency tasks. If you still can't, then the problem may be too small to serve as a good
project.
Scenario design. Choose 3 important tasks and invent a scenario for each one -- a concrete example of the task, performed in a hypothesized interface. Use rough sketches to illustrate what the interface might look like at important points in the task.

To gather information for the user and task analysis, you should interview 3 representative users who face your problem (at least 1 from each user class, if you have multiple user classes). If possible, observe them dealing with the problem in their real work environment. When you write up your analysis, don't provide a narrative of these sessions. Instead, offer your conclusions, and justify them when you can by referring to observations. For example, "grocery shoppers may be distracted by children; one mother was repeatedly harrassed by her son to buy some candy."

When you draw your sketches for the scenario design, don't get bogged down in details like wording, icon appearance, or layout. Keep things simple. Putting too much time into low-level details is pointless if big things have to change on the next design iteration. Hand-drawn sketches are encouraged.

What to Hand In

Your report should be around 5 pages, including sketches, handed in as hardcopy. Include the following parts:

Title. Give your project a title, if you haven't already.
Problem. Briefly restate your problem.
Users. Describe each of your user classes.
Tasks. Describe each of the 3-6 tasks you have identified. Every task should have a goal, preconditions, subtasks (if any), and exceptions (what can go wrong). Also include a paragraph describing other relevant features of the task, such as time constraints or frequency of use.
Scenarios. Describe scenarios involving your 3 most important tasks. Where your task descriptions were abstract (e.g., "Buy groceries"), your scenarios should be concrete (e.g., "Frodo stops by the supermarket on his way home from work to buy some milk, bread, and tomatoes...")