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What is a task analysis?
A task analysis is where you start to think about all the
things you will need to do to complete your project.
In the design process you always start with a brief or a specification
which explains what kind of a product you should be making (you might write
this yourself or if you were working in a design company you might be given
this by a customer who wants something designing).
After you have created or received your design brief (or
specification) you will take a good look at it and start thinking about how you
are going to approach the task. You will come up with a list of things that you
may need to find out or things that you may need to do to enable you to complete
your project.
Most designers use a method called brainstorming.
A brain storm starts of with one word on a page,, from that word you will think
of all the other things that will be relevant to that word. So if you right
down the name of your product as your first word then there may be many things
that come to your mind that you need to think about to help you design this
product. Each idea that you have you will right down on the page and draw a
line from it to the starting word (name of your product in this case). Imaging
you have written four things that come to you mind when you think about how to
design and make your product (you come up with the words materials, safety,
shape, and function for example (these are only a few of many words that you will
need to write)) . From each of these four new words that link to your first
word, you will think of other words that relate to the new words, so for
example when you think about shape you might consider the possibility of three
different shapes. You will right down the name of the shapes and draw a line
from these words to the word shape.
So you can see that it’s a bit like making a map of
your thoughts, one thing that you think of will make you think of other things
that are related to that thing. You create a map to show how all the things
relate and connect to each other…
Another word for Brainstorm is Mind Map!
Example of how you
could lay out your brainstorm. This one is not complete and needs more details
adding!
Why would we want to do a task
analysis?
It is really helpful to a designer to create a list of all
the things that he/she will need to do to create a successful product.
A task analysis helps you to think about all the things that
you might need to do: like research what materials you might want to make your
product out of, how you might shape the materials, what components are
available to you, what knowledge will you need, how you might combine a number
of circuits together, what calculations you may need to do, what things you
might need to find out about the customer you are making your product for, what
shape you might make your product, what safety issues will there be (is your
product going to be dangerous?), what will you product do (what will its
function be?), how much will your product cost to make and how much could you
sell it for etc etc etc….
You need think of all these things right at the beginning
of your project as it is no good realising that you need to change the shape of
your product after you have started to make it and after you have ordered all
the materials etc… as this will waist a lot of time and money! So we have
to plan ahead and make sure we think of everything in advance!
How do I approach creating a task
analysis?
Think of all the things that you might need to do to
create your product, right them all down on a piece of paper in the form of a
brainstorm/mind map (as explained above)
Write down as many things as you can think of!
You don’t have to lay your page out like a mind map,
some people just create a list of things that are relate to there case and a
list that relates to there circuit..
Some categories to help you get
started:
Shape
Circuit
Components
Inputs
Outputs
Process blocks
Colour
Material
Aesthetics
Function
Form
Customer
Safety
Quality
The environment
Social issues
How can it be made
How will I test my product
You will need to put all the usual stuff on your page like
heading and an explanation of what the page is about along with your name,
candidate number and centre number.
Good luck and please ask for help if you get stuck. You
can also email for help on the address given in this website
Click here for more on
completing a task analysis tips
And here is a
link to a good example
