TASK SHIFT: Changes in the Object of Documentation

Writing documentation to support tasks is a common enough practice that our approach to it is transparently commonsensical: start from a notion of task that requires users to learn and apply a piece of software or machinery in a specific way. “Task orientation is writing, structuring, and organizing software users manuals according to the tasks that a user wants to accomplish and telling the user how to perform these tasks in step-by-step procedures” (Partridge 1986, 26). For as common as this approach is, however, we have not always agreed on what a task is or how to document it. And