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Alyssa Fox wonders <<Can someone tell me what a task analysis is?>>
Just what it sounds like: an analysis of what tasks your audience performs
with your product, how they perform those tasks, and the context in which
they perform the tasks (e.g., at the office, while dodging bullets, moving
at 200 km/hour down the road, or all of the above <g>). Task analysis is
part of the larger job of audience analysis, which extends to understanding
who your audience is (i.e., their expectations, their existing skills and
knowledge, and so on), and what this says about how you can approach the
task of documenting these tasks.
The reason why you do a task analysis is to obtain an understanding of how
people use your product so that you can take measures to produce
documentation that supports these tasks.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)} ghart -at- netcom -dot- ca
"Most business books are written by consultants and professors who haven't
spent much time in a cubicle. That's like writing a firsthand account of
the Donner party based on the fact that you've eaten beef jerky."--Scott
Adams, The Dilbert Principle
