ABSTRACT
Task analysis is the study of the tasks that have to be undertaken by individuals or groups in order to achieve particular system goals. Thus, it could be argued that task analysis is almost as old as tasks themselves and certainly the systematic investigations of manual tasks by Gilbreth and others in the early 1900s could be considered as task analyses. However, the term “task analysis’’ was first popularized within the psychological and ergonomics communities by R. B. Miller in the early 1950s (Miller 1953). Miller considered that all task investigations should start by breaking down a complex task into a series of sub-tasks or task elements to produce task descriptions, consisting of an action verb and a noun, that described each of these task elements. To Miller, task analysis referred to the subsequent methodical examination of these task descriptions. In order to ensure that all the important task features were considered during this process, Miller specifically obtained the following data for each task element:
O cues initiating the action; O controls used; O decisions involved; O typical errors; O response required; O criterion of acceptable performance; O feedback of task completion.
