Task Analysis

A systematic method for breaking down complex activities into their component tasks, subtasks, and actions to understand how users accomplish goals when interacting with a system. In accessibility and usability evaluation, task analysis is used to identify potential barriers by examining each step a user must take to complete an activity, revealing where the interface may fail to support users with specific disabilities. Task analysis can be performed from multiple perspectives — the user's actions, the system's responses, and the interaction between them — and is particularly valuable for evaluating non-visual interfaces such as sonification and auditory displays, where traditional GUI-focused inspection methods may not apply. The method helps designers understand not just what users need to do, but what they need to know, perceive, and decide at each step.