Hierarchical planning as method for task analysis: the example of office task analysis

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Abstract
The paradigm of hierarchical planning from artificial intelligence literature is used to describe 133 office tasks. Various levels of abstraction are described. Their number varies with the tasks. From several examples we demonstrate that some of these levels can be grouped and that any task can be broken down using a four-level model: the most abstract level of the task formulation; the expert level, which represents specific context procedures (or subtasks); the highest common level, these being common procedures which are domain independent; the lowest verbalizable level, or elementary actions. Then the common procedures are considered as possible functions in a computer aided system. From a detailed analysis of some of these common procedures, we emphasize the obligatory or optional features of certain actions. Using an example we propose a function description which takes these features into account.

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