inputs/outputs

The following is a sketch of an idea for a social/technological revolution.  I’ve been trying to write this post for a while, but it’s never sounded articulate.  It still doesn’t, but it’s important to get this out.  Feel free to contribute.

Something finally dawned on me today.  In general, users don’t like systems.  This is why we try to work our way around most of the time, and why we come up with “hacks.”  But I suppose another way to look at it is that it’s not really the systems that we don’t like, it’s the amount of systems we’re required to deal with on a daily basis.

I use Gmail because I like Gmail, but in the office, I’m required to use Outlook, or something worse.  Sure, we could set our emails to be forwarded, but we wouldn’t be able to use the address book.  We have a user/pass for the app we use for our work, a user/pass for the app we use to manage our work, a user/pass for the time-keeping software we use… and it goes on.

It seems as if we’re yearning to break our data down into bits and pieces so that the bits can be read by anything.  You could use Outlook if you want, or Gmail.  The address book data would be compatible with both.  My manager tracking my time in Excel is fine if I can input my time in Gmail.  You should be able to see what available time I have in your Outlook interface, even if my calendar is in Gmail.  Almost like RSS, applied to everything.  The content remains the same, but it’s the medium that’s up to the user.

The bottom line:  we follow our career paths because we want to help people and we want to be creative in doing so.  We don’t like being bogged down by admin tools, but we know that it’s a necessary concession, even if we have a personal assistant.  Better communication means we’re more productive when we have time to be productive.  The more spread out those admin tools become, the worse it gets.  The less we want to do, the less we remember to do, and the less we care.  Less brainpower goes to the work that actually matters.

And this doesn’t mean that we need to get rid of certain technologies.  We just need to make sure that users can pick one to get everything done with.

More to come on this topic.