How do you Create Delightful User Experiences? Task Flows!
Ariel, the main character in The Little Mermaid, is fascinated with human beings. She collects human artifacts like forks or hairbrushes and studies human behavior so she can understand people better.
Too bad Ariel was not hip to the task flow that would’ve helped her get human behavior WAY faster.
What is a Task Flow?
A task flow is a diagram that breaks out each of your customer’s actions required to complete a single goal. It displays the steps your customer takes to move through your app.
These steps can be simple and outline a ‘happy path’ — which is a path with no errors. If your users’ goal is complex your task flow will likely contain multiple decision points and paths. A decision point is where the user has to make a choice, such as electing to rent a car or not while making an airline reservation. If the user elects to rent a car, this will include extra actions for the user to take.
Why create a Task Flow?
Task flows show you at-a-glance what actions your user choose and why she takes them. This understanding of the customer’s process at the core of user centered design — it’s all about the customer and identifying areas for improving their experience. Without knowing the problem the customer is facing, you can’t create a solution.
When’s the best time to start a Task Flow?
Task flows are usually created during the beginning of a project when you are still learning about the customers’ needs, goals and pain points. The objective of a task flow is to understand the customer’s perspective of their tasks and what their friction points are.
How to build a Task Flow
A task flow starts with a goal — like, for example, buying an airline ticket. You take the goal and break it down into the individual steps the user takes. For instance, the user must select an origin and destination and date and time. Once this search is complete, the user selects a flight, selects seats and pays for the airfare. This would be the happy path. In reality, there are many more possible steps as the user is prompted to rent a car or reserve a hotel room.
Once you have broken down the goal into individual actions the user takes, you put this into a flow chart diagram. How do you do this?
- The actions go into rectangles with lines connecting the linear actions.
- A decision point (like do you want to rent a car?) is represented by a diamond shape. This is usually a yes/no option with two lines coming out of the decision point representing the two paths possible.
- What you’ll end up with is a flow chart where the last box is the goal. In the example below, we show the path a user takes to purchase an airline ticket:
As you can see in this example, the task flow has one decision point — the option to select a seat on the plane. Here, the user can take one of two actions. Selecting a seat will add two more actions to the sequence, but it is not necessary to complete the transaction.
How to go with the Flow
Creating a task flow is harder than it seems. Each action needs to propel the user further along the path with the least amount of resistance, or friction. When you break a goal down into its individual actions, it’s easy to see why users become frustrated with software. There are so many steps and possibilities for errors.
How can you simplify the process and make it even better?
Once the task flow is drawn out, your next step is to analyze it and discover how you can streamline the process. This can include dropping unnecessary actions or combining like actions. Your mandate is to make the process as easy as possible for the customer. This means providing the minimal number of actions required to achieve the goal.
Had Ariel created a task flow for the fork or hairbrush, she might have understood human behavior a little better. With task flows, you can understand your customer’s behavior, goals and pain points to help you create a delightful user experience.