ABSTRACT
Methods of collecting, classifying, and interpreting data on human performance in work situations lie at the very heart of Ergonomics and Human Factors (Annett and Stanton, 2000). Accordingly, task analysis approaches are the most commonly used and well-known form of Human Factors methods. They are used to collect data about and describe tasks, systems, and devices in terms of the physical and cognitive activities involved during task performance; they focus on “what an operator … is required to do, in terms of actions and/or cognitive processes to achieve a system goal” (Kirwan and Ainsworth, 1992, p. 1). The outputs from task analysis methods are used for a variety of purposes, including task and system design and evaluation, interface design, training programme design and evaluation, allocation of functions analysis, error identification and analysis, and procedure design. Their popularity is such that there are over 100 task analysis approaches described in the literature (Diaper and Stanton, 2004), and they have been applied in all manner of domains, including the military (e.g., Matthews, Strater, and Endsley, 2004), aviation (e.g., Stanton, Harris, Salmon, Demagalski, Marshall, Young, Dekker, and Waldmann, 2006), driving (e.g., Walker, Stanton, and Young, 2001), healthcare (e.g., Lane, Stanton, and Harrison, 2007), public technology (e.g., Adams and David, 2007; Stanton and Stevenage, 1998), music (e.g., Hodgkinson and Crawshaw, 1985), and sport (Doggart, Keane, Reilly, and Stanhope, 1992).
