Free Download Tiny Task
Beatzby Wall
it's supposed to open a tiny task recording and then after it's done kill it/ end the task and then wait 3 seconds before doing it again.it would do this 3 times.but instead, it doesn't kill the tiny task and it doesn't stop at the 3rd timeif I kill it myself it will go through the loop all over again.Please Tell me What I'm doing wrong!
In the wireframing phase, neither design or development are relevant. But we want to keep those tasks on the board as they are part of the known scope. So we would like to simply filter by tag to see only tasks in the Wireframing phase.
I have used tinytask to execute simple macro involving clicking at a point. But when I start the macro, it takes my physical mouse. I want to be able to run the macro in the background and continue working with mouse.
I figured it out :) I downloaded TeamPlayer 2.0.10 which is free for non-commercial use. Once installed and opened, it automatically detects the mice. One is the touchpad of my laptop and other is the external mouse. I used tinytask to record with the touchpad mouse pointer and it works! I can now use the physical mouse to do other things while the macro is running in the side.
Tiny tasks are also full of organizational ego. Often, the more important the task is to the customer, the less content is being produced for it; the less important the task is to the customer, the more content is being produced. This inverse relationship is very typical.
Cisco recently undertook a project using Top Tasks Management. When we completed their research, we had over 600 tasks. (In a typical project, we tend to gather between 300 and 500.) Here is a small sample of what the initial tasks looked like for Cisco:
The next step is to bring the longlist of tasks down to a shortlist of no more than 100. Getting a feel for the tasks takes time, which is why we recommend planning on four to six weeks to do the task research and get to the shortlist. Here are some guidelines for shortening your list:
The third step is to have customers weigh in on the shortlist. We usually send out a survey and ask each person to rank five tasks, giving 5 to the most important, 4 to the next-most important, and so on:
The benefits of such an evidence-based, collaborative approach are worth the effort. For example, in 2010, downloading a typical piece of software could take 15 convoluted steps and an average of 280 seconds. Now, much of the software can be downloaded in four steps and an average of 45 seconds. Success rates have improved for many tasks by as much as 30 percent.
Another key outcome of Top Tasks Management is a more collaborative work environment, where people come together to manage a task, rather than just manage a website or an app or publish content for a particular department. Cisco has embraced this approach; the Marketing and Support divisions are in regular contact, and employees from IT, usability, content, and experience design work closely and coordinate their efforts.
A great article. The thing that really strikes me about your article is how you prioritize tasks over user personas. We have been working with a very similar methodology. I am really interested in how you then apply this task list to the next stage of ux (which I assume is journey mapping) without a persona to pin this on.
Maybe you can suggest a book or resource that I could explore?
Thanks
Additionally, the tool we used to measure top task completion time (UsabilityHub), also measures the percentage of first time completers. Thus, we gained insight into how many people of our test group managed to complete top tasks, without clicking one single wrong link. That percentage also increased dramatically (in one case from 0% to 75%, with a test group of 20 users).
Then we can look into the data and see if the tasks are different. Do you know what we find most of the time? Huge overlap of top tasks regardless of audience. In Cisco, for example, everyone was very surprised when the results showed that the tasks of potential customers were very similar to current customers.
What resonated with me about this article is the idea of tiny tasks. I work with large institutions that think they have thousands of use cases. But the majority are either works of fiction or edge cases. They waste so much time and effort on tiny tasks and they so often make it hard for people to complete the top tasks.
In a ongoing project to develop a new online solution for all Norwegian hospitals, we used both focus groups (qualitative methodology) and top task analysis (quantitative methodology). Both methods have proved to be very useful.
But the focus groups have helped us understand the top tasks.
We now relize we will address people in a vulnerable part of life. They are extremely information-hungry. They do not distinguish between medical and practical information, they want it all in the right context. And they process information as part of the treatment.
It is interesting, Cynthia, to run two top tasks surveys with the exact same task list: one for the customer, one for the organization. Then you can prove with data where the organizational pet tiny tasks and blind spots are. As Zann pointed out in an earlier comment, the data is quite compelling and can convince a great many colleagues to change their focus.
Great article Gerry. We, at Neo Insight, have been using your top task approach since 2007, after you gave your Master Class in Ottawa, Canada. Since that time, we have done several Top Task Identification projects as well as numerous Top Task Performance Indicator projects with both private and public sector organizations.
As clients move along the digital maturity curve, they realize that web funding cannot be project based. It must be based on an operations budget focused on continuous improvement, not major reworks every 3 or 4 years. They realize the focus has to be on task management, not content management and not on managing new technologies.
Ultimately, they extend their task based focus to addressing cross-channel customer interactions, ensuring the web experience is integrated with other channels which all complement and support one another.
It is critical to understand what your customers are trying to do on your websites, versus what they are doing (clicking on), as Jeffrey points out. Once you have identified what their top tasks are you need to continuously measure and improve them. Working with Jeffrey and his colleagues we have found that some tasks which reach a high level of performance can then begin to decline because the Web is a dynamic environment. New content gets added, search results change, and simply things break. You need to keep monitoring your top tasks.
A powerful aspect of the approach, as Bill points out, is that it is metric you can control. If you improve the task and then test again, your score on the Task Performance Indicator will increase. You can show management the value of your work.
I know we could use customer feedback, stakeholder reviews, and peer website research, but could we also use site behavior and search analytics beyond page traffic and search to help us first, establish top tasks and second, measure their success?
So, if you want to get a true picture of the world of your customer, assemble your task list from multiple sources. Think beyond what you currently have and try and get into the mind of your customer.
Part of the process involves getting the organization to create a journey map. Then we test with real customers and see if the journey map the organization created actually reflects how the customer is trying to complete the task.
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