What is Task-Driven User Interface?

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What is Task-Driven User Interface? Is it the same as Task-Based User Interface? What are the advantages over CRUD?

pattern-design ux usability
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    To avoid the risk of being wordy, or repetitive, you can find an excellent example in the accepted answer, and your comments, of this question. Already a longer but excellent explanation, showing the differences in relation to CRUD can be seen in this article.

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Yes, task-driven user interface is the same as task-based user interface. Both mean "task-driven (or task-based) interface" and typically refer to enterprise database management software.

The advantages of the task-driven user interface over CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) interfaces are:

  1. The user does not directly manipulate the entire database. Instead, it is presented to windows with sequential options to perform one task at a time.

  2. Consequently, the user does not need to have the knowledge of the entire database to perform its tasks.

  3. The interface seeks to guide user behavior through common language (rather than programming), which makes the intention and meaning of each operation more intuitive.

  4. Finally, the user does not need to have programming knowledge. Just follow the menu options.

The advantages of CRUD (create, read, update, and delete) interfaces are:

  1. The user may (though not necessarily) have complete control of the database through programming language. Not all CRUD interface works by programming. But the main difference is that in the CRUD interface the focus is on maintaining the database structure. While in the task-driven interface, the focus is on guiding user behavior.

  2. Consequently, the advanced user can in a CRUD interface create and implement new processes and results that are not predicted by the software of a task-driven interface.

A concrete example:

Suppose you develop information management software for a network of pharmacies.

When the counter attendant records that a product that should be there is actually missing, she makes a change to the database. However, it does not need to have database knowledge to do this operation. It is more efficient if it deletes the item from the database through a task-driven interface, which will present it with the option to delete the item and insert a justification. The software does the rest.

Meanwhile, the pharmacy network’s IT analyst needs to use the pharmacy database to investigate and understand users' consumption patterns and build predictive models for future sales. In this case it will probably perform queries through a CRUD interface.

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