Task Analysis through Cognitive Archeology

Successful User Interface (UI) designs often utilise insight into tasks by studying user interactions, intentions, and expectations. User interaction itself amounts to the interplay of cognition and information processing as embodied by task routines or sequences that are commonly captured in a TA. This chapter will focus on procedures for uncovering cognitive processes relative to user goals and tasks including decision-making systems, the impact of information overload on screen display, and the significance of user roles to tasks. The notion of a “cognitive archeology” as a means to investigating task cognition will be explored and explained as a novel best practice in TA.