What tasks emerge from Knowledge Work?

Abstract

Over the 21st century, work has changed from physical labour to knowledge work that is mostly cognitive. To date, very few tools have been developed to facilitate its completion. While much has been written about tasks and many categorisations of tasks have been developed, the work is too broad and lacks discriminatory power. While we may know the task is, for example, to write a report, we do not know what goes on inside the task. Without knowing what tasks are performed at a detailed level, it is difficult to design appropriate tools to support task completion. This research will first identify the key tasks within a particular domain, isolate the various elements and then extract the detailed subtasks. In the second part, these subtasks will be examined in other domains. The research will be conducted primarily using semi-structured interviews, and the results will be thematically analysed. The outcome of this work will be a task structure that identifies the key points in task completion that could be better facilitated by tools.