Symptoms

Form associated with Workflow User Task does not load data from the form that launched the workflow.
 

Diagnoses

The SmartObject item reference was not being successfully passed from the Form to the Workflow. When the item reference was added to the 'Start the Workflow' rule, a form-level error was returned upon submission: "The item references for this workflow could not be resolved because the View or an instance of the View can not be found on the Form."
 

Resolution

After moving the 'Start the Workflow' rule to the Form's rules, instead of the View's rules, and configuring it (dragging the SmartObject item reference into the Workflow's item reference field of the same name), the Workflow was launched successfully and the data loaded on the Task Form.