Task Flow

Task Flow is a visual representation of the steps a user must take to complete a specific task, focusing on individual tasks rather than an entire journey. It breaks down each action a user needs to perform, helping designers understand how to simplify, streamline, or enhance each step for better usability.

Task flows reveal where users have to make unnecessary decisions or take roundabout paths to complete simple goals — problems that accumulate into significant daily frustration for heavy users. Mapping task flows before and after a redesign provides a concrete before/after comparison that quantifies improvement and aligns teams around specific friction points. For enterprise products sold on productivity claims, reducing steps in key task flows is a measurable ROI argument.

Asana's task creation flow was redesigned from a 5-step modal to an inline creation in the task list — mapping the task flow revealed that users had to leave their current context to add a task, a friction point that the inline solution eliminated entirely while maintaining all the same input fields.