10 skills.
Use when asked to uncover the mental processes and decision-making behind a task — interviews, think-aloud protocol, knowledge elicitation, cognitive workload assessment — as the mental-process-focused counterpart to task-analysis's more general, observable-steps focus.
Use when asked to gather and analyze detailed accounts of significant events — define/collect/select/code/cluster/interpret — as a qualitative research method focused on specific incidents rather than routine task execution (see task-analysis).
Use when asked to run a diary study — recruitment, guidelines, diary keeping, data collection, analysis, reporting — a longitudinal qualitative research method for capturing experiences, behaviors, and thoughts as they unfold over time, from participants' own ongoing records.
Use when asked to decompose a complex task into a hierarchical structure of subtasks, actions, and operations — task identification, decomposition, relationships, documentation, evaluation — as the structural-decomposition specialization of task-analysis.
Use when asked to write or conduct a literature review — a systematic survey and synthesis of existing published work on a topic, done before or alongside new research — as distinct from a [[research-proposal]], which proposes new work and often uses the review's findings to justify why that new research is needed.
Use when asked to write a research proposal — a document laying out a specific research question, method, and plan, usually to secure approval or ethics sign-off — as distinct from a [[grant-proposal]], which specifically requests funding and is often built around one; a research proposal can exist with no funding ask at all.
Use when asked to design a survey, questionnaire, or feedback form — writing questions and response scales that actually measure what they're meant to without leading or confusing respondents — as distinct from a [[user-interview-guide]], which is a qualitative, open-ended conversation rather than a standardized instrument.
Use when asked to break down a complex task or activity into its component steps — the identify/collect/decompose/sequence/document/evaluate/improve process — as the general umbrella technique behind more specific methods like hierarchical-task-analysis and cognitive-task-analysis.
Use when asked to prepare questions for a user interview, customer interview, or discovery call — a qualitative conversation structured to surface real behavior and needs — as distinct from [[survey-design]], which is a standardized written instrument rather than an adaptive spoken conversation.
Use when asked to examine how work actually flows through a process or organization — workflow mapping, time analysis, data-flow analysis, roles/responsibilities, decisions, controls — as the process-level counterpart to task-analysis's single-task focus.