Use it or lose it

I've written a few times for Image and Data Manager (aka IDM) magazine now and in the recently published Jan/Feb 2005 edition you'll find my latest article, Use it or lose it.

In this article I investigate the relationship between usability, measuring results and success with technology. For the article I interviewed Tony Biddle, a consultant from UsabilityOne, and spoke with Kevin O'Donnell from the Australian Institute for Project Management. I worked with Kevin at Ernst & Young for a while and he has applied his content management skills to improve usage of the AIPM Website - a great example that shows getting good usage isn't always about having the coolest site, but about getting users to the information and resources they need.

BTW You can find an archive of past articles on my Website and my most recent article will be added in due course. Look out for a critical review of Wiki technology in a future edition of IDM.

The Right Mind-set for Managing IT

I was researching something else when I came across this great Harvard Business Review article from 1998, titled "The Right Mind-set for Managing Information Technology". It compares western and Japanese approaches to managing IT.

What I like about this article is that first they identify five common business and technology problems:

1. IT investments aren't linked to business strategy;
2. Payoff from IT investments isn't enough;
3. Too much technology for technology's sake;
4. Poor relationships between users and IT specialists; and
   
5. System designs don't consider user preferences and work habits.

Sound familiar? Then then analyse and compare the way western and Japanese managers frame IT. In summary they suggest that the Japanese have better practical outcomes with IT because they use strategic instinct to identify appropriate technology that are designed around how humans work. They measure on performance improvement and encourage organizational bonding between IT and users by colocating and rotating staff.

The authors claim that one outcome of the Japanese approach is that IT spending is focused on incremental continuous improvement - fast forward to 2004 and this is very similar to an argument that Leigh Moyle (from Intranetworks) and I put forward in this article we wrote for Image and Data Manager magazine, called "The Search for the Perfect Intranet". The point around design reminds me of the point may by Tom Davenport in another HBR article, titled "Saving IT's Soul: Human-Centered Information Management".

Even if you don't accept the comparison or the analysis, the idea of reflecting on the mind-set we use to plan, design and manage information technology is a useful one.

Digital Pen and Paper

Considering I was only just talking about the design qualities of the ol'Bic biro yesterday, I noticed today that there is a lot of excitement at the moment about new "digital pen and paper" from HP and Nokia. Apparently this is a real bonus for organisations that need to fill out lots of forms - the information can be captured on paper and digital format at the same time so it can be transferred into a database.

According to this report in ARNnet each pen costs US$199, but rest assured that if you happen to lose one it can be deactivated. Maybe I'm missing something, but surely the types of environment (and users) that might use this solution are probably the type that are going to lose a lot of pens? (this is just based on my own experiences of course...)

What is Good Design?

The Design Museum in London, UK, recently asked visitors to nominate suggestions for the best low-cost innovation ("Under a Tenner" - pdf of the media release). The most popular choice was the humble Bic ballpoint pen according to a report in the UK's Daily Telegraph. According to the Telegraph, the biro was extolled in the exhibition by Fernando and Humberto Campana, a pair of Brazilian furniture designers, who described it as "practical and easy to find, ergonomy while writing."

I wonder what people would have suggested if they were asked to nominate the best information technology innovations? Someone who might have an opinion on this is Donald Norman - he has a list of well designed products (not all IT related) that he considers to have "special positive characteristic worthy of comment". In particular I like the reference to Goggle's non-error messages. Predictably Apple's iPod is also listed... but I guess being popular, not clever, is what this is all about.

Beware the Instant Messaging Bogeymen

I couldn't help but react to this post in excited utterances about the risks of instant messaging (IM) for the legal industry. I commented that:

"Oh dear, I had thought the days of the IM bogeymen were just a distant memory. The instant messaging phenomenon might be new to the legal industry but else where it has already taken off and in fact the compliance tools already exist. While Whitfield and Thompson focus on the risks of chat they fail to mention the benefits of "presence" provided by IM and how IM bots can provide alternative interfaces into other databases and systems. By the way, the key lesson from other industries is that if legal firms ignore IM and fail to implement corporate solutions, users will find their own."

Maybe I was bit tough, but IM is often misrepresented. True, it isn't appropriate in all circumstances (just like any kind of information technology) but to evaluate IM you need to look at range of benefits it provides including chat, presence and integration with other systems within the broader context of the organisation where it is being used. There I've said it and now I feel much better :-)

Wiki - over hyped, but still useful

There is a lot of hype around Wikis (and Blogs as I've said before), but Jon Udell writing in Computerworld ("Togetherness with another name", 27 Jan 2005, p.21 - there is a version of the article here) I think presents the most balanced commentary I've seen for a while. He pin points two useful attributes of a Wiki:

1. It reduces Web publishing to the bare essentials so that anyone can contribute (like a Blog); and
2. The Wiki encourages consensus above individual authorship.

Point 1 provides a lot of value in it's own right, for example the NSW KM Forum (I'm part of the forum's coordinating committee) is using a Wiki system to provide a quick and easy Web content management system (CMS). Unfortunately we had to password protect the site because of Wiki-spam (sad, but true), but that aside it works really well.

Research to help multi-site organisations collaborate better using technology

The excellent IT Section of the Australian newspaper reported an interesting initiative out of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). In a year long project, UTS researcher Melanie Kan will be investigating how workers in large multi-site organisations use technology to communicate with each other.

As I mentioned in another post, I'm very interested in how we design collaborative workplaces. However it was disappointing to hear that one output of the research would be "a piece of software or a technology". IMHO I would be very surprised if they can come up with once bit of new technology that will magically improve multi-site collaboration. But let's wait and see what they come up with I guess.

BTW If you're interested in this area, have a look at Steelcase's research on workplace design, information technology and teams.

PDF options unlimited

I've always encouraged people to make use of Portable Document Format (PDF), especially when sharing files by e-mail or across the Internet. Unfortunately I think people may be under the impression that in order to create PDF files you need to purchase expensive software. In fact while there are many good reasons to use Acrobat software from Adobe (the original designers of the PDF format), these is a good range of alternative PDF software options to suit all budgets and needs, including freeware and open source options.

One freeware PDF tool I discovered recently is PrimoPDF. It's a free no frills tool for creating basic PDFs. Like many of the freeware tools it makes use of Ghostscript, however installation is simply and straightforward. It is also ad free so there are no annoying pop-ups. To create a PDF you just print the document to a virtual PDF printer - you can then choose to create a PDF that is suitable for on screen viewing or high-quality printing.

I actually use a combination of free and commercial software. I have a copy of PublishPDF Pro (retails for around A$200) installed on my desktop PC that I use when I need more control over PDF output, such as such security and encryption. However on my laptop I usually find myself using the native PDF export function in OpenOffice, an open source alternative to Microsoft Office, for creating simple PDF of documents I've created. I use PrimoPDF for everything else.

e3 stylus replacement for old PDAs

Recently I acquired an old Palm Vx PDA. Having been a Psion Series 3 fan many years ago (would you believe I used it to write Uni assignments on it back in the early 1990s) I did try a Series 5, but after the flap mechanism broke and I had trouble syncing with a corporate network I gave up. One thing I know about PDAs is that for them to effective it really has to be all or nothing. Anyway I decided to wait and see how the new PDA/phone combos evolved before buying a new one... then someone gave me this Palm Vx. I thought, ok I'll give it a go and see how it fits in with how I work.

I had great fun in the first few days checking it out and even signed up for the AvantGo service so I could read the Sydney Morning Herald on the train when I travel up to Sydney. Then I promptly lost the stylus. That's when my troubles began. The cheapest replacements I could find initially were going to cost around A$30-A$40. You can almost buy a new PDA for double that now, so I decided that wasn't cost effective enough. Afterall I was just after a bit of plastic!

A bit more googling and I finally discovered a product by BIC called e3. This pen has a PDA stylus, pen and pencil in a single unit. It's not quite what I want but at only A$10 it's cheap enough and hopefully chunky enough that I won't lose it. The only odd thing is that in Sydney at least the only retailer who I could find that stocks the e3 is WC Penfold's.

PS I do miss my Series 3. RIP.

SMEs breaking the break-fix habit

I'm not sure who should be worried the most, but it looks like the big boys in the IT industry have just figured out what most people serving the SME market knew already... that people in small business like to do business with people they know and trust. This is just one of the conclusions from research firm IDC in their report, Outsourcing and the SME.

However, there was some good news in IDC's report. They say that "SMEs are realising that the break-fix approach is not the long term solution to their IS management problems". I certainly agree that if you do want to get more out of information technology, then breaking the break-fix habit is certainly one of the steps.

But while I'm pleased to see this as a trend, I would urge any size of business to think carefully about outsourcing any element of IT as a solution to their IT management problems. Outsourcing IT means that risk is transferred to the service provider, but you still need to manage this transferred risk. Unfortunately this often requires a degree of IT know-how and I suspect this may be why some SMEs hesitate to outsource in the first place. It also goes some way to explain why trust and relationships are so important.

Notes from a visit to the Ark workplace

Today I took a bit of time out of my busy schedule to visit the offices of Assai in Sydney. Physically their office space has a capacity for 30 people but Assai have an unusual arrangement because they actually share their open plan office with six other small professional firms as well as some virtual or hotdesking tenants. My reasons for visiting them is that I'm very interested in how organisation create collaborative environments, physical and online.

The administration of the office, called The Ark, is community based. This means they operate on a fixed cost basis (with exception of telephone calls) that covers things such as stationary but also the use of other facilities like meeting rooms. Despite that fact that there are many different businesses operating in the space, there appears to be a strong sense of community in place and this guides people to do the right thing and use resources fairly. Compare this to most corporate open plan environments!

From the perspective of the integration of technology into the workplace I was particularly interested in the fact that they put their services - cabling and air conditioning - under the floor rather than above as is typical. It means that they have greater flexibility to rearrange the layout because power and data are underneath. They also use a cordless DECT phone system that means people can wander around the office or even go down to a cafe below but still have access to their landline. However, I can also see great potential for a wireless data network in this environment - particularly for the meeting room and informal spaces - so that the spaghetti of blue LAN cable can be banished. I would then be interested to see how that impacts on their use of shared space.

It is very easy to look at The Ark workplace from just a single architectural, social or technology perspective. But what appears to make this environment work is the fact that they have thought about both the social and technology infrastructure needed for a "community" to exist.

Corporate blogs - revolution or evolution?

Don't take this the wrong way, but I can't help not getting excited about the idea of corporate blogs. This has nothing to do with denying the impact that blogs have had on the Internet, but in the corporate environment I really think this is more of an evolution than a revolution.

For example, excited utterances reported a new article in Free Pint on corporate blogs that stated, " specialist blogging software had been available only since early 1999". I'm very sorry, but if you wanted to implement a corporate blog then the technology was definitely available much earlier with Lotus Notes. Evidence of this comes from the fact I spent four years in a corporate environment that made full use of it's Lotus Notes infrastructure. Even before I got there in 1999 they had been using Notes to drive discussion forums, many of which in practice could be described as a corporate blog (which isn't that hard when you look at the possible uses for corporate blogs). In that context I found this interesting comment by the man behind Lotus Notes (and now Groove), Ray Ozzie, in his own blog:

"In 1993 or thereabouts, we saw the emergence of TCP/IP, HTML, HTTP, Mosaic and the Web. From our perspective, all of these were simplistic emulations of a tiny subset of what we'd been doing in Notes for years. .. I am quite embarassed to say that we frankly didn't 'get' what was so innovative about this newfangled 'Web' thing, given the capabilities of what had already been built."

Of course what does make blogs different from Lotus Notes is the fact that content can be shared through an open standard, RSS. This also means that there are a whole bunch of non-proprietory blogging products out there that make the provision of self-publising tools very cost effective. No doubt this has contributed to the take up of blogging inside and outside the firewall. However, in the corporate world at least, revolution it isn't!

Back to basics phones

Talking of information appliances... I remembered that Vodafone in Australia have recently released a range of budget mobilephones that focus on long talktime but minimal features. Apparently people "were often dissatisfied when fancy features such as video phones had compromised battery life". While they aren't the first to do this, it's a good reminder that sometimes less is more.

Usability and Information Appliances

In the last few days I've finished writing an article for a magazine on the topic of usability. Typically I end up researching quite widely but because of space (and time) constraints some of the peripheral ideas end up being put aside. In this case I was side tracked momentarily by the concept of information appliances. They sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from all singing and dancing, multifunctional technologies. Information appliances can help to reduce some of the complexities around achieving usability by focusing on discreet tasks and by positioning technology within a specific and often physical context. A good example is Steelcase's RoomWizardTM. For more on information appliances see the Appliance Studio site. It is also worthwhile looking at the success of self-service kiosks in airports and a well known fast food chain - not only are they a good examples of information appliances in practice, the airport kiosks also show how you can empower customers with information technology.

Hello world

Hello world. The inspiration behind this blog, and also my business Chief Technology Solutions, is the idea of helping organisations of all shapes and sizes to "get on, not get by, with information technology". I would love to take credit for this tagline but the idea for it in fact comes from a report that is part of the excellent and higly recommended body of research work by the UK's Work Foundation's iSociety project.