The Handbook of Task Analysis for Human-Computer Interaction

Rating:
Summary: Diaper does it again!
Review: As a comprehensive sample of current research on task analysis if not the definitive reference, Dan Diaper and Neville Stanton's Handbook of Task Analysis for Human-Computer Interaction is indeed a worthy successor to Diaper's long out-of-print, but still widely cited Task Analysis for Human-Computer Interaction of 1989. This new volume's thirty chapters bring together a wealth of reference material, experience reports and evaluation studies of task analysis models and methods currently in use. Contributors include the leading authorities in the field: many of them the originators of the methods they describe, in some instances taking a retrospective and critical view of their progeny's efficacy. It adds up to a systematic re-evaluation of what task analysis is or could be.

The Handbook's contents are structured into five sections - Foundations, IT Industry Perspectives, Human Perspectives, Computing Perspectives and Today and Tomorrow - each with an introduction and rationale. Moreover, individual chapters are cross-referenced so as to provide alternative pathways through the book. The addition of extensive author and subject indexes, together with the complete contents on CD-ROM, make this an indispensable reference for any serious student, researcher or designer-practitioner of human computer interaction, computer-supported co-operative work or ergonomics. And in the paperback edition, at an affordable price. What more could anyone wish for?