Design Process & Task Analysis | HCI

Design Process is a systematic approach used by the designers to resolve complex issues or problems and deduce the solution. It is a structural method that helps designers to think, plan, and execute their ideas in real life to solve the complex problems given to them. In the rapidly changing world, design plays a key role in making any product or service to satisfy customers and meet their expectations. In this article, we will see some of the most important aspects of the Design Process and Task Analysis, and dig deep into the world of Design Methodologies, Task Analysis, Types of Task Analysis

HCI Design

Human-Computer Interaction Design is a multidisciplinary field that puts emphasis on the interaction between a computer and a human. It’s about ensuring the smooth interaction between a human and a computer system by ensuring that the computer systems are user-friendly and efficient. HCI designs have some key aspects, some of which are listed below:

• User-centric Design: The heart of HCI design is to make the computer system user-friendly, to do that it is recommended to design the computer in the most user-friendly way possible. This approach takes into account the need of the user and their preference throughout the entire design process.
• Prototype: Most of the time designers create a prototype of the final product and let the users try it beforehand and ask them to provide feedback so that they can make some improvements in the final product and the final product will have fewer problems.
• Accessibility: HCI designers also need to keep in mind the systems that can be accessible by everyone, even by the person who has some disabilities. So keeping that in mind and adhering to the rules, they designed the system in such a way so that everyone can use that.
• UI Design: The main thing that comes up when using any system is the User Interface (UI), and a simpler UI makes more people use the application. So the designers use various design software to come up with a simple yet effective UI that everyone can use.

There are three principles which are used by the designers for the user-centered approach:

• Data based evaluation
• Early Emphasis on User Needs and Objectives
• Design in an iterative manner.

Data-Based Evaluation

Data-based evaluation is a technique that depends upon user feedback and empirical data to assess the usefulness of a certain design prototype before making the final design. This process is solely done to ensure that the design meets all the expectations of the main user or the stakeholders.

Early Emphasis on User Needs and Objectives

Putting an early emphasis on the user needs and objectives makes the design more user-friendly as well as used to improve the design based on the user’s need, main aim, and context. It also helps to ensure that the final design is user-centric, fulfills the user’s needs and easy to use by the user. Usually the designers does this during the early stage of the design, so that they keep in mind about the user’s needs and aim throughout the entire design process.

Design in an Iterative Manner

Desiging in an Iterative manner means that the entire design process from start to end is not a linear process, In a linear process, the designer starts the design and throughout the entire process of the design they don’t listen to the user or any others and just delivers the final product as instructed to him at the start.

In an iterative approach, the designer creates a certain product (prototype), let the user test the product and then gathers the feedback from the user, using the feedback they make changes in the design and again let the user test it until and unless the user says that they liked the product and no other change is needed to do there.

Design Methodologies

There are several Design methodologies that are used in Design Process and Task Analysis. Some of them are listed below:

• User Centric Designs: UCD is an approach whose main goal is to make the user satisfy with the design and making sure that they don’t face any issues while using the application. Designers emphaises on the user’s needs, conducting multiple testing, releasing prototype and gaining feedback, using those feedbacks to update the application etc.
• Task Analysis: Task Analysis is an approach used by designers to break a large and complex task into smaller and easier sub-tasks.
• Cognitive Walkthrough: This approach is used by designers in which they try to imitate how a person would react with the application and their thought process while doing various tasks in the application. It is helpful to identify that where the user might get stuck while using the application.
• Contextual Inquiry: It involves interviewing the user live while they are interacting with the application and performing some tasks, it helps the designers to understand the workflow of the users.
• Scenario based Design: Designers create some scenarios in their mind to guess how the users might interact with the application and how they will react in various situations. This is helpful to understand the user’s thought process and using that the application can be improved.

Participatory Design

This process involves all the share holders who have given the work to the designers to design something. This is purely done by the designers so that the share holders can see the prototype and they can insist some changes if they want. Then the created design can be used in various fields as desired by the share holders, like software design, architecture, product design, planning etc.

It is basically called “Participatory” because the shareholders are directly involved in this process, this is not an approach of desigining anything, it emphasises on the procedures and the processes followed by the designers.

Some of the characteristics of Participatory Design is listed below:

• Involvement of Stakeholders: All the users, stakeholders or any other people directly or indirectly involved in the design process actively participate during Participatory Design, they also help in changing or updating the design as they desire.
• Empowerement: Users can influence the design by a lot by providing their own input to make relevant changes into the design as needed. It empowers the users as they can influence the design process according to their need or ease of working.
• Prototyping: In PD phase, the designers can take input from the end users or stakeholders and make relevant changes to the design and create a prototype, users on the other hand can use those prototypes to see everything is fine or not, or provide any other suggestions if needed. This is a very important part of PD.
• Democractic Decision Making: During the PD process, all the stakeholders agree upon to a certain design before making it final, they all provide certain inputs about making some changes into the design and all come to a consensus when they find everything is alright. No single person has the right to decide which is correct or which is wrong, everyone needs to be involved.

What is Task?

In the context of Design Process and Task Analysis, a “Task” is referred as a specific activity or action that is performed by the user while interacting with a service/application, product etc. Tasks are the building blocks of any kind of activity or process.

Task Analysis

Task analysis is the study of how a user will complete any certain task successfully. The process include complete detail about the task given to the user and approaches they are taking and the entire breakdown of the approach from the beginning till the end, until the user has solved the problem.

This not only include the cognitive approach, but also includes the Physical Approaches to solve a task if needed. It’s a systematic process used to document, understand, analyze the specific tasks, actions, or activities that users perform while interacting with a system, product, or service.

There are some key aspects of Task Analysis, which are given below:

• Understanding user tasks: Task Analysis begins with analysing the task given to the user or the task user has chosen to complete. It also involves studying the users’ role in the task, their responsibilities and their main goal.
• Observing the Users: Observing the users thoroughly while they use that application or prototype is also a crucial step in Task Analysis. How they are interacting with the elements, which approaches they are taking, what decisions they make etc. everything is being observed by the designers.
• Workflow Mapping: This is useful to map the workflow or the path user is taking to solve the problem. This is being done to represent the approach is a graphical or chart manner which is easier to understand.
• Understanding the Complexity of the Task: Understanding the task complexity is also a key point to understand the calibre of the user who is solving that task, and also used to determine the types of users that would be needed to solve the tasks.

Example:

Consider there is an opening for a software engineer in a certain organization, which is a lengthy and complex process.

• they will first start with discussing the requirements they want
• Then putting the advertisement about the vacancy,
• Then they need to open a portal through which people can apply
• Then from those submitted applications they need to select some and then schedule the interviews etc.

This complex task can be divided into smaller sub-tasks like one small team will come up with the advertisement, one team will take care of the portal, one team will filter the submitted Resume, one team will schedule the interview etc.

Each of the team will have a certain member who will observe the approach of each team to solve the assigned sub-task to them, then they will share their findings with the other teams, this way all of the team members will have their input in the final decision, and they will reach a consensus that a certain approach will be followed by everyone to solve the main problem and hire the perfect candidate they want.

Hierarchical Task Analysis

Hierarchical Task Analysis is a way to break s bigger task into smaller sub-tasks and make a hierarchy and solve them one by one to reach the final step and solve the main problem. It is mainly used in the field of design and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to describe, analyze and understand the approach taken by users to solve a big and complex problem.

Some of the Key Features of HTA includes:

• Hierarchy: Complex and big problems are divided into smaller sub-problems, which are then organized into a hierarchical manner, so that user can add the solution of each sub-problem to solve the real big and complex problem.
• Decomposition: Each main task is divided into smaller sub-tasks, and each sub-task is then solved one by one, this approach gives a clear understanding about how a task can be solved or has been executed.
• Sequential Flow: hierarchical Task Analysis captures the sequential flow of the task execution, it shows the flow in which the problem was solved.
• Visualization: Hierarchical Task Analysis often represent the flow in charts of graph format, which makes it easier to understand the execution flow of the problem.
• User-Centric: Hierarchical Task Analysis is performed from a user’s perspective, means that how a user would react with the system, what would be their work flow to solve the problem etc.

Techniques for Analysis

In the field of Design Process and Task Analysis, there are several techniques which are used to analyse the tasks and the processes deeply. These techniques help the designers tremendously to understand the user’s approach to a certain problem, in which points they are focusing while solving the problem, provide feedbacks to the designer about the design etc.

Some of the common Techniques for Analysis are given below:

• Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA): Hierarchical Task Analysis is one of the mostly used techniques used to analyse complex tasks from the user’s perspective. It is used to break down a bigger and complex task into smaller and simple sub-tasks to make a hierarchical structure. It is useful to understand the entire structure of the task and how solving each sub-tasks will eventually be used to solve the complex main task.
• Cognitive Task Analysis (CTA): CTA is used to analyze the users’ cognitive ability and the mental strategies to solve a certain problem.
• Activity Diagram: It is another process which is used to visualize the flow of the activities within a system or a process. They are helpful in modeling high level and detail task sequences.
• User Surveys and Questionnaires: These are used to directly gather feedback from the users about a certain product or service. These feedbacks then can be used to modify the service or product to make it more useful and user friendly.
• Time-Motion Studies: This approach is used to record the time a user takes to complete a certain activity or task. This can be useful while understanding the efficiency of the user and evaluating the task efficiency and workload.

Engineering Task Models

Engineering Task Models, also known as ETMs, are a crucial component of the system and software development process, particularly in the field of Design Process and Task Analysis, alongside Human Computer Interaction. ETMs are detailed, formal representations of how users interact with a system to complete specific tasks. They provide a structured way to describe and analyze user activities and interactions within a software application or system.

Key Aspects of Engineering Task Models

• Abstraction of user Tasks: ETMs abstract any complex tasks into a smaller well defined steps or actions, this process simplifies the representation of the task.
• Hierarchical Structure: ETMs also provide a Hierarchical Structure, breaking the bigger and complex task into smaller sub tasks, the hierarchical flow helps the designers understand the user’s flow of activities and understand the relation between the sub-tasks.
• Formal Notations: ETMs mainly uses formal notation to represent tasks and interactions accurately.
• Human Performance Prediction: Several ETMs like GOMS can estimate the time a human might need while interacting with a system or a service and how much time he/she takes to complete a specific task.
• Error Detection: ETMs can also be used to find flaws in the design or the system.

ConcurTaskTree

ConcurTaskTree or CTT is a modeling technique and a notation used in Design Process and Task Analysis. It has been designed to analyze and model task based user interactions with a complex system / problem. It is mostly used in critical domains like AeroSpace, Automotive Design and Healthcare Systems.

Some of the key factors of ConcurTaskTree are given below –

• Concurrent Task Modeling: CTT allows the modeling of the tasks which are concurrent, means the tasks which the user need to do simultaneously. This is beneficial for the systems which supports multi tasking.
• Temporal Constraints: This enables the Designers to provide time constraints into various tasks which helps them calculate the deadline and synchronize requirements accordingly.
• Optional and Mandatory Task: Designers can specify whether the task is optional or mandatory, which helps them decide which task to give more priority.