The task analysis that Young Ideas performs for its clients serves this same purpose. Young Ideas unpacks the features and goals that our clients have defined, and reorganizes them according to the requirements that the users have outlined. A formal task analysis not only points the way toward a logical organization of features, but also provides naturally extensible solutions. When building up components, the team doing the analysis thinks in broad terms, making sure they explore and include any boundary conditions within any groupings they create. A design based on a formal task analysis is therefore more flexible and solid than a design created by skipping from feature set to feature set.
Task analysis consists of several stages.
These stages include initial investigation of the workflow, breakdown and definition of user tasks, buildup of those tasks into one or more configurations, and description of future use cases. The first exercise in a task analysis is to research how the potential users currently do their work. The Young Ideas user interface team gathers work pattern data from the client and from consultants that the client has hired. If there is time in the schedule, Young Ideas will also interview the users. Next, the Young Ideas user interface team lists all the tasks in the workflow, and often draws a diagram of the workflow, to help visualize the process.