identification criteria in task modeling
Post on 19-May-2015
497 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
1 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Identification Criteria in Task Modeling
Josefina Guerrero García, Jean Vanderdonckt, and Christophe Lemaigre
Université catholique de Louvain (UCL)Louvain School of Management (LSM)
Information Systems Unit (ISYS)Place des Doyens, 1 – B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)
http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/
2 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Outline
• Introduction and motivations
• Toward methodological guidance for task modeling– Model– Task life cycle– Identification criteria
• Case study
• Conclusion and future work
3 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Introduction and motivations
• A task is an activity to be performed in order to reach a goal.
• A task model is supposed to capture most elements describing how a task is carried out by a particular user in a given context of use or in a given scenario.
• Task modeling has become today a widely recognized activity in the User Interface (UI) development life cycle.
4 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Introduction and motivations
• Despite the recent advances, task modeling still remains a challenging problem:– There exists a significant gap on the means to be used to
obtain a task model .– When some guidance is provided, it mainly consists of
syntactical rules which are completely independent of the domain of human activity.
– This often results in many variations in the task model obtained in the end: different people may produce different, possibly inconsistent, task models for the same design problem because they do not share the same perception or rules.
– People experience some trouble in identifying the points where to start the task modeling and where to stop it.
5 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Introduction and motivations
– People may diverge on their interpretation of what needs to be captured in a task model and what not, in particular what makes a task and what does not make a task?
– This problem is even more acute when task modeling is conducted in the context of a larger design problem such as workflow modeling.
• We propose a set of criteria in order to identify tasks during task modeling in an unambiguous way that results into a task model exhibiting desired properties of quality such as completeness, consistency.
• In addition, starting and stopping criteria provide designers with guidance on when and how to start and finish the task modeling.
6 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Underlying Model
TaskTask
Task ResourceTask Resource
User StereotypeUser Stereotype
MaterialMaterial
ImmaterialImmaterial
ProcessProcess
WorkflowWorkflow
1..*
0..1
1..*
1..*
1..*
ContextContext
DomainDomain
PlatformPlatform
EnvironmentEnvironment
Abstract UIAbstract UI
Concrete UIConcrete UI
Final UIFinal UI
0..*
0..*
0..*
1..*
0..n
Task & domain
AUI level
CUI level
FUI level
7 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Expanded task life cycle
Taskcreated
Taskoffered
Taskallocated
Taskdelegated
Taskstarted
Tasksuspended
Taskcancelled
Taskfailed
Taskcompleted
Taskfinished
define
offerstart
start
startallocate
delegatereturn
cancel fail
suspendresume
run, redo
undo, repeat
finish
reviewTask
created
Taskoffered
Taskallocated
Taskdelegated
Taskstarted
Tasksuspended
Taskcancelled
Taskfailed
Taskcompleted
Taskfinished
define
offerstart
start
startallocate
delegatereturn
cancel fail
suspendresume
run, redo
undo, repeat
finish
review
8 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Identification criteria
• Since a task is defined as an operation executed while four dimensions remain constant (i.e., time, space, resources, information), any variation of any of these four dimensions, taken alone or combined, thus generate a potential identification of a new task in the task modeling activity.
– Change of space (or change of location): when the scenario indicates a change of location of the operations, a change of task may occur.
– Change of resource: when the scenario suggests that new or different resources are exploited, a change of task may occur.
• Change of resource of type “User stereotype”
• Change of resource of type “material” • Change of resource of type “immaterial”
9 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Identification criteria
– Change of time: when the scenario indicates a different time period in which the task is performed, a change of task may occur.
• Existence of an interruption • Existence of a waiting point : Waiting point of type “decision”
or “accumulation” • Permanence of execution unit • Periodicity of execution
– Change of nature: when the scenario represents a change of category, a change of task may occur. A task may have any of the following nature: manual, automated, interactive or mechanical. Any change of this nature may indicate a change of task.
10 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Identification criteria
• Some stopping criteria based on the task life cycle are:
– For horizontal stopping: when the task is finished, or the task is canceled or the task failed.
– For vertical stopping: when a task can be performed in a simple and well-determined way (i.e. the task cannot be decomposed in sub-tasks), when the task is executed by a software system and we do not intend to replace this system with anything else.
11 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Identification criteria
Time Space (location)
Resource Type
Workflow
Series of time periods
Different locations; same organization
Same or different groups of resources
-
Process Series of time periods
Different locations
Within groups, group as a whole, or among groups
Primary (production), secondary (support), or tertiary (managerial)
Task Same time period
Same location
One or two types of resources
User, interactive, system, abstract, or machine task
12 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Case study
• To process claims that result from car accidents, the company uses the following procedure:
– Every claim is registered by a desk clerk. He introduces the customer’s full name, policy number, and the problem’s details in the insurance company system.
– After the registration, an employee checks the insurance’s information as the status, the insurance’s coverage, and the damage history.
– Also, he phones to the garage to get the cost of the damages.
13 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Case study
– After executing these tasks a decision is made by the manager, with two possible outcomes, positive or negative.
– If the decision is positive, then the insurance company will pay. An accountant handles the payment.
– The secretary of the insurance company sends a letter to the customer. Also, a letter will be sent to the customer when the decision is negative explaining the causes of the rejection.
14 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Case study
15 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Task
Process
Workflow
16 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Conclusion
• We have introduced a set of precise criteria that can be used in order to identify a task in a textual scenario and to distinguish a task from other concepts like process and workflow.
• The main advantage of these criteria is that they could be used for any task modeling activity, whatever the task model notation or method used; as: Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA), Méthode Analytique de Description de tâche (MAD); Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selectors (GOMS), Task Knowledge Structures (TKS), Groupware Task Analysis (GTA), ConcurTaskTree (CTT).
17 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Conclusion
•In order to support this activity in scenario-based design, a software has been implemented in Java 1.5
•This method has been validated on several real-world case studies
CASE STUDY TASKS IDENTIFIED
Bank credit for a car 20
Organization of a Triathlon 72
Personalized order of compression stockings over Internet
25
How to get my driving license 25
Airport passenger workflow 20
18 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Future work
• Future work includes the evaluation of task analysis methods.
• Empirical evaluation will be conducted confronting two groups of task analysts, the first group, designing a solution without using the guidelines and the second using them. Thus, these results will contribute to the credibility of the proposal.
19 HCIS’2008 – Milan, September 8-9th, 2008, during IFIP World Congress 2008
Thank you very much for your attention
For more information and downloading,http://www.isys.ucl.ac.be/bchi
http://www.usixml.orgUser Interface eXtensible Markup Language
http://www.similar.ccEuropean network on Multimodal UIs
Special thanks to all members of the team!
top related