Thejus,
The help is a little misleading - When the Get Attributes action is chosen in designer mode, a dialog box is displayed for the designer to specify a table, field, variable combination. When the step is executed the fields configured are displayed to the user in a grid. The values input by the user are assigned to the variables internally by the Tasks module.
The only current use for these variables is to be used by the task designer in subsequent steps in a calculate field action.
Hopefully this clarifies the role of variables in the Get Attributes and Calculate Field actions. I will make sure the help is updated to explain this more clearly.
Thanks
Narelle