CX Strategic Knowledge · CX Methods
Task dimensions™ — a diagnostic model
If confident users make errors, the system is the problem.
Larry Marine's Task Dimensions model diagnoses the friction embedded in task steps along four axes: manually intensive, high cognitive load, error-prone, and knowledge-dependent. It turns vague complaints about difficulty into specific, fixable design problems.
Friction hides inside individual task steps. The Task Dimensions model gives you four lenses to find it and name it.
- Manually intensive: too many steps, too much effort
- High cognitive load: requires thinking, remembering, interpreting
- Error-prone: users make predictable mistakes
- Knowledge-dependent: assumes users know account numbers, policies, rules they don't
Two traps deserve emphasis. Error messages are not good design; great CX prevents errors upstream. And knowledge dependence is invisible to the teams who built the system, because they already have the knowledge. If confident users make errors, the system is the problem.
Apply this
Reading about task dimensions™ — a diagnostic model is one thing. Seeing where it applies in your journey is the useful part.