Time-Critical Core Tasks

Some core tasks have a different nature since they may be time critical. If, for example, your telephone starts ringing while you're watching TV, muting the TV will in this situation be a time-critical core task. And you may want to come up with an innovation such as shaking the remote control to quickly mute the TV.

Finding your mobile phone when a call is coming in is another example of a time-critical core task. When your phone rings, you often want to answer it before you miss the call.

Finding specific information on a company website is yet a third example of a time-critical core task, if you want to quickly look up specific data. The fact that many company websites do not support good solutions for this core task is one of the reasons for the success of Internet search engines, which can get you directly to the content you need on a company website, without your having to go through the maybe unintuitive front page of this company's website.

To some extent you may want to see all core tasks as time critical. With a few exceptions (such as game playing), users do not want to use excessive time completing a task. They want to complete most tasks as quickly as possible—and without problems. If a product competing with your product gets the core tasks done faster and more easily, then you may have a problem.

However, highly time-critical core tasks often need different solutions than other core tasks. In many cases, simple, intuitive, and fast solutions may be preferable.