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Improve Your Task Analysis! Efficiency, Quality and Effectiveness Increase in Task Analysis Using a Software Tool

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Abstract

As the field of Task Analysis (TA) is still fragmented and poorly understood by many, a software-tool, build by HFC Human-Factors-Consult GmbH, has been developed for easy and better TA. Purpose of the study is to evaluate the efficiency, quality and effectiveness of TA performed with the support of this software-tool. In the experiment, 36 participants conducted a total of two hierarchical-TA (HTA) on two given tasks, once using the new software-tool and the second using fundamental methods i.e. paper-&-pencil. The results indicated that the software-tool aided participants in producing good-quality analysis, provided support and guidance during the HTA-process and helped in maintaining a consistent performance-level in terms of both quality and effectiveness. The findings resulted in identifying the strengths and acknowledging the shortcomings of the new software-tool, thus providing a concrete direction for further improvements. Moreover, the study adds to literature by developing checklists to make this assessment, which in turn proposes components that characterizes a good TA.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The NASA-TLX is a multidimensional, subjective rating procedure used to assess workload [23] which was developed by the human performance group at NASA Ames Research Center.

  2. 2.

    The SUS System Usability Scale is a simple ten-item Likert scale that provides a global view of subjective assessments of usability.

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Acknowledgement

The author is responsible for the content of this publication. We thank all participants for their time and effort and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We would also like to show our gratitude to HMKW University of Applied Sciences for Media, Communication and Management, Berlin, for their support.

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Correspondence to Vaishnavi Upadrasta .

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Upadrasta, V., Kolrep, H., Oehme, A. (2020). Improve Your Task Analysis! Efficiency, Quality and Effectiveness Increase in Task Analysis Using a Software Tool. In: Ahram, T. (eds) Advances in Artificial Intelligence, Software and Systems Engineering. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 965. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20454-9_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20454-9_38

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