Towards a theory-based form of cognitive task analysis of broad scope and applicability

All forms of task analysis rely on the idea that human action can be decomposed, and that the decomposition can be used to reason about what people should do and know to complete a task. With simple technologies, the process of developing an analytic focus was readily tractable. The allocation of function among people in a team and between people and technology was straightforward. Tasks were thought of as primarily involving vigilance, perceptual-motor skill, memory, decision making, communications, or some simple combination of these capabilities. Today, the situation is less straightforward. As tasks have become more intricate, knowledge intensive and subject to increasingly integrated forms of technological support, traditional forms of task decomposition appear to have overly restricted scope.