Technology (when used properly) can and should make life easier and tasks faster. However, getting to this point can take forever.
We are currently trying to create a master calendar for the entire campus. For years departments have made individual calendars, but there has been little to no way to compare information, communicate to others, and to detect conflicts. When I used to do this at the high school, everything was paper based. I sent out a paper form for people to fill out with their events, and I sorted through these to enter information. As I sat down today to start working on a new procedure, I figured with the power of technological tools available to me now, this antique process should be a piece of digital cake.
Until I started to work on the form. I used Google Forms as tool, and almost immediately I started to hit roadblocks. How do I ask the questions, so they are understandable to anyone? How do I use the limited response formats to collect the differnt types of data that I need. Will the resulting form be so difficult that people won't use it? Will the collected data be in a useable form in the end?
I worked on this (ultimately) 10 question form for over two hours. Once I was satisfied, I picked a few knowledgeable people to try it and give me feedback. Only one of three very intelligent people filled out the form in the way that I expected, and all three had questions. The clarity that I saw was based on the entire thought process that brought me to the question…not necessarily the question itself. I could not rid myself of ultimately knowing what I wanted.
So back to the drawing board, and I've made some progress. The second pass had far fewer confusions and errors, but it still wasn't there yet. I keep saying to myself, “This will be so simple once it's done that everyone will appreciate it.” However, I suspect that there will still be some who find it confusing and many who would much rather just put the information on a piece of paper. Such is the reality of living in changing times.
As I was working, I remembered one of the paradoxes of Zeno, the Greek philosopher. He stated that in order to get across a room, one would first have to get half way across, and to get halfway across, one would first have to cross half of that, and half of that, and so on. Since units can be divided infinitely, and a person cannot cross an infinite number of units, movement is essentially impossible.
Everything that is easy today was made possible by someone who worked and worked to figure out how to make it easy. My hat is off to those people today. OK, here comes the next feedback…let's see where we go from here.
As always, I welcome your comments.
Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Zeno_of_Elea_Tibaldi_or_Carducci_Escorial.jpg
Posted with Blogsy
Living in the technological age:
We went to Sprint store today to change to an iPhone 6. After we waited for fifteen minutes past our appointment time and saw numerous employees wandering about, we left.
I ordered a gift for a friend from Harry and David. They had been pestering me with e-mails to choose form my former gift list. When I did, they told me I did not have an e-mail address with them. What resulted was about ten more minutes of filling in things.
I had ordered on-line from Target. I did not get my gift card which was part of the package. I wrote them. They sent a form letter back with an 800 number. I called it. After about four minutes of menus, I was told the site was experiencing difficulties and that it would a long while before I could speak with a customer representative. I hung up.
This isn’t what I signed up for when I got my first computer 30 years ago. Technology has become synonymous with sloppiness and poor service. For children it has become the TV of the times.