CSE 440 - Introduction to HCI - Autumn 2024

Assignment 3.1: Task Review

Due: Wednesday, October 23, 3:00pm

This assignment is a component of Milestone 3. Be sure you have reviewed that larger context for this assignment.

The goal of this assignment is to build on what you learned in your design research to develop a set of tasks that you will guide your exploration of potential designs.

Informed by your design research, provide brief and appropriate answers to the following task analysis questions. These should help you begin to identify tasks that are essential to a design.

  1. Who is going to use the design?
  2. What tasks do they now perform?
  3. What tasks are desired?
  4. How are the tasks learned?
  5. Where are the tasks performed?
  6. What is the relationship between the person and data?
  7. What other tools does the person have?
  8. How do people communicate with each other?
  9. How often are the tasks performed?
  10. What are the time constraints on the tasks?
  11. What happens when things go wrong?

After completing your task analysis, identify six tasks that you believe are important to your design goal:

  • Remember that tasks say what is accomplished, while leaving open how to accomplish it.
  • Select tasks to capture important aspects of the problem you are addressing. Your six tasks should span a range of functionality, thus providing coverage of the problem for potential designs.
  • Create tasks based on your observations and analyses of existing tasks (i.e., tasks people already do) as well as your vision for new tasks (i.e., tasks that could be enabled by potential designs).

Each task should be presented as a brief sentence concisely conveying a problem or what is accomplished. The task should then be supported by a paragraph story providing additional context and details. Context and details might be based on what you found in your design research or your task analysis, such as certain goals or values a person may bring to a situation, the context in which a task is performed, a narrative motivating how and why the task emerges as important for a person to accomplish, and specific details that are relevant to completing the task. Such details can then be explored in scenarios with potential designs you will develop in later assignments.

Tasks should not be specific to any specific potential design, as you will develop those in later assignments. Although it can be helpful to describe a task in the context of a specific story, the task itself should be more general and potentially achieved using different potential designs.

As you progress in your project, you can and should consider revising your tasks. Expect to refine or change your tasks as your understanding of the problem matures or according to feedback. The tasks you develop in this assignment therefore must be appropriate but are not necessarily final.

Submission

Due: Wednesday, October 23, 3:00pm

Within the Drive folder for course project files:

  • Identify the Slides deck corresponding to this assignment for your group. The deck provides a template for this assignment. Edit the deck in-place, so that you can easily share it in critique.

  • Prepare a Slides deck with the following structure:

    • 1/2 slide for each Task Analysis Question (6 slides total)
    • 1 slide for each task, consisting of:
      • A concise statement of the task.
      • A paragraph story providing additional context and details.

Reminders and requirements:

  • Submission via Canvas is also required, in support of grading.

    • Remove instruction slides and template markings from your deck before submission.

    • Export a PDF of your deck, via the menu: File -> Download -> PDF Document (.pdf).

  • This is a group submission. Ensure your section and names of all group participants are appropriately clear.

  • Review and follow guidance on Clarity and Presentation.

  • Names of participants should be replaced with pseudonyms in all documents. It is important to protect participant anonymity, even in the case that reporting seems harmless.

The Drive folder for course project files is here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Sm12CpuMNsKBqk6E_Ri875hfFs0A-IRS?usp=drive_link

Submit via Canvas here:

https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1746586/assignments/9759789

In Class

Be prepared to discuss your design research and tasks.

Completion Grading

This assignment will be graded on completion of 8 components:

  1. Task Analysis Questions

    Informed by your design research, provide brief and appropriate answers to each task analysis question.

  2. 6 Proposed Tasks

    Provide a concise statement of the task.

    Provide a paragraph story providing additional context and details.

  3. Clarity and Presentation

Prior Samples

Samples are from prior offerings that had different requirements. Samples are also intended only to illustrate a variety of approaches, and were not selected to be ideal or exemplary. These may help to see how prior students approached elements of a project, but be sure to understand and consider requirements and feedback in your own work.