ABSTRACT
An important part of a user’s requirements is their ‘information requirements’; that is, the information that must be displayed in order for a user to operate a system effectively, together with details on how to organize that information sequentially. Information requirements are often sidelined in the design process: many methodologies support only the specification of functional requirements (Harker et al. 1990). This paper describes how one task-analytic method, the Sub Goal Template (SGT) method of Shepherd (1993; see also Shepherd and Ormerod 1992) was redesigned to enhance its usability. The SGT method adopts Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA; Annett et al. 1971) as the basis for information requirements specification. Under the SGT method, the information requirements for each of the tasks specified in an HTA are determined through the application of task templates, to which the user need only supply task parameters to complete stereotypical information requirements for each task.
