YourTotalSite.com posted about a very interesting idea. They are talking about replacing a website’s site map with a task map. On the one hand, it goes against the usability of a site (aren’t people used to using a site map?). Then again, do most visitors care about a site map? If they don’t care about a site map, will they care about a task map?
Oh! What is a task map? Well, I’ll let them describe how you create one. You’ll probably get it:
…how do you honestly go about doing this? It’s much easier than you might think.
- Begin by making a list of the tasks that your users need to accomplish.
- Once you have a list of tasks, take it one step further by making a task map instead of a site map.
- Now that you have a structure for tasks and interaction, take a look at each task and determine the pages it would take to enable users to complete each task.
Voila. That’s task maps. It’s not rocket science, it’s just a matter of taking a step back and approaching the problem from a different angle.
What interests me about this is an effective website is one that makes it easy for a site visitor to accomplish a particular task. A site map just lists all the pages that are available to do that. A task map lays it out step by step. Sure seems like a decent idea…but there’s something about it I’m not sure about. Can’t put my finger on it, but I think it’s a very interesting idea! If you try it out, let me know what you think.
4 Responses to “Task Maps”
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I guess my first reaction is that a task map is for more interactive web sites, PHP/MySQL driven sites that allow a user to interact more. A blog by itself would probably not need this unless you are using a lot of features like typepad users can offer like a subscription to each posting being sent via e-mail or searching the site.
I think this is probably where we need to go to really understand our own site. It is one thing to organize content, it is quite a different to understand what a user has to do to use all the services of a site.
You know, I said I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that kind of bugged me about it. Terry’s comment helped me process it…
The site should be organized well enough so that a person can accomplish tasks without needing to go to a task map.
I think that’s what’s been nagging me. I think it’s still a decent idea, but if the site is designed well enough, it would seem you wouldn’t need a map like this…and I’m not sure a visitor would realize they needed to go to the map to accomplish the designer’s task.
Sites should not have physical site maps or task maps. Rather, the idea behind task maps it that it is taking a different approach to organizing the site.
It’s a different way of thinking really. I really don’t think there should be a physical page on anybody’s site that links to all of the tasks. I was merely suggesting that people start approaching applications as a set of tasks instead of a set of pages.
Good comments though. Makes me do a better job of explaining myself.
I’m bringing the conversation up to a post about Site Maps.