Tasks and Task Descriptions for GIS

GIS ‘tasks’, like those involving any other information system, can be described at a number of different levels. It has been suggested that the imposition of a descriptive hierarchy, such as that developed by Rasmussen and other workers in the area of process control, would enable us to compare users’ tasks and task descriptions in different contexts, and gain a structured overview of GIS use. This paper reports a pair of studies — a postal questionnaire survey and a workplace observation study — which yielded information about GIS use in various contexts. When the Rasmussen hierarchy was used to describe this information, most GIS users’ interpretation of the word ‘task’ could be placed at or near the ‘Generic function’ level of the hierarchy. The results also show that most users are utilizing only basic functions of their GIS software.

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