Top Task Analysis
User-centered prioritization of content and use cases.
Top Task Analysis identifies the tasks that users want to accomplish with your product frequently, and those that only play a minor role. This allows for user-centered and evidence-based prioritization of content and resources.
What is Top Task Analysis?
Most websites suffer from too much content. Each stakeholder has their own belief of what is important to the users, and corresponding content is generated quickly. A landing page here, a glossary there, maybe some FAQs. A wide offer cannot be bad, right? However, the users’ reality looks quite different. There are few but important tasks that users want to accomplish with your product. Those so-called top tasks make up a large part of the product’s use.
Experience shows, that 5 % of tasks are responsible for 25 % of usage. Opposed to that, usually 60 % of the content accounts for only 20 % usage. More content makes finding important content much more difficult.
A Top Task Analysis gives you a clear, evidence-based answer to the question of what the most important tasks and content for your website or application are. This enables you to prioritize where the value for your users is the highest.
Our Approach to Top Task Analysis
In the first phase, our team analyze a variety of sources to identify all potentially relevant tasks for your product, aiming to ensure that no central task is overlooked. Typical sources include content audits, search terms used (in the application and on Google), analytics, available user research results, help desk and support requests, competitors and internal company sources.
In the next step, your project team collaborates to create a narrower selection from the complete list of possible tasks. This shortlist covers all important areas of the application, is phrased in the users' language, and avoids overlaps between tasks.
The shortlist serves as the basis for an Online Survey where users prioritize the tasks that are most important to them. At the same time, additional information about target groups and segmentation is collected.
Subsequently, our team analyzes the results, highlights connections, and compiles the findings into a clear, practical report that will be discussed in a small workshop with your project team.
Wondering if a Top Task Analysis can help your project move forward?
In a short conversation with our Consulting Team, you can quickly find out how we can best support you. Alternatively, feel free to send us a short message, and we will get back to you.
We are happy to advise you - free of charge and without obligation.
What Can We Find Out with a Top Tasks Analysis?
- How should the information architecture be structured?
- Which content should be revised or produced?
- Which features should you prioritize?
- Do user groups differ in their needs?
- Where are critical gaps in the knowledge about your users?
- How well does your image of the user match reality?
- Which user research questions are the most important ones?
When Do We Recommend a Top Task Analysis?
In our projects we frequently notice that there are uncertainties or even disagreements in the customer’s team about who the most important target groups are and which tasks a product should primarily support. However, understanding the users and their needs is essential to develop a product that delivers real value.
Analytics data or Usability Tests only paint a fragmented picture in this case. Analytics analyses do not show which tasks are not yet supported by the application or which task was the trigger for a page view. Website visits often reflect a combination of different tasks. Usability Tests on the other hand tell you how to optimize the usability for certain tasks – but which tasks you should look at remains unanswered. If you know your users and their top tasks, you can prioritize where it really matters.
On this basis, methods such as Card Sorting and Tree Testing help you to build a user-centered information architecture.
The method is particularly suitable in these cases:?
- You want to revise the information architecture or the navigation.
- New content is constantly being produced.
- You want to prioritize features.
- The website or app is extensive and complex.
- There is no knowledge or only assumptions about the most important user goals.
- Decisions are made based on beliefs rather than evidence.
- There is a dilemma between strategic focus on new customers versus existing customers.
- There is only little collaboration across departments in creating and prioritizing content.
What Are the Results?
Our results report includes a clear presentation and prioritization of all tasks. You receive a precise and evidence-based list of the most important tasks that users want to accomplish with the help of your application.
Based on this data, we can investigate more complex questions through further in-depth analyses, e.g. whether there are major differences in the top tasks between user groups or segments. Or are there typical clusters within the tasks?
Once the most important tasks of your users have been identified, you have laid the foundation for an efficient, intuitive navigation structure. You can prioritize content and features based on user needs and continuously measure and optimize their success.
Personas
Card Sorting
Usability Testing 
On-site Survey
