The illusion of productivity

Posted on 2010-10-27 by Jon Leirdal

Have you ever considered how easy it is to manipulate people with technology? How we, without reflecting upon the issue, regard everything like “this is the way it is”. Consider this article on Placebo buttons. The author describes how a lot of buttons we have around us do not have any functionality. Typical examples is the door closing button in an elevator, or the wait button to get a green light while waiting to cross the road. The buttons lights up, but often do not have any other functionality. All it does is to give us an illusion that something is happening.
You have got almost the same thing using software. While opening a program we get the spinning wheel or time glass. It tells us that something is happening, and we are relaxed. But is something really happening? And how productive are we while we wait?

Posted from Oslo, Oslo, Norway.

Blogging everywhere

Posted on 2010-06-15 by Jon Leirdal

I work at a company called Computas AS, located at Lysaker, outside of Oslo, Norway. Computas recently updated their web-pages and among else included blogging as one of their new features. Thus you may now find some of my blog-entries at the blogging area of www.computas.com.

Computas AS is a medium sized (in Norway) IT-consultancy. They deliver services and develop solutions within areas like business processes (BPM), complex software systems, and collaboration.

The site is in Norwegian, but there is one English information page, and there will be an English version available soon. (If you want to check out the site before then, you can always try Google Translate, but the results may vary).

The visibility of tools

Posted on 2010-05-28 by Jon Leirdal

I recently discovered a link to this little gem on fundamental laws of software from David S. Platt who writes for MSDN Magazine. (I want to give a shout-out to Alf Kåre Lefdal on twitter for finding the article in the first place.)

David lists his three laws like this.

1. Your software has zero value in and of itself. Nothing. Nada. Zero point zero zero. The only value it ever has or ever will have is the degree to which it enhances the happiness of your user in some way.

2. Software can increase users’ happiness in one of two ways. It can help a user accomplish a task that she wants done, such as paying her bills or writing this column. Microsoft Word is an example of this type of application. Or, it can place the user into a state he finds pleasurable. Games fall into this category, as does Skype, with which my daughters make video calls to their grandparents.

3. In neither of these cases do users want to think about your computer program. At all. Ever. In the former case, she wants to think about the problem she’s solving: the wording of the document she’s writing; or whether she has enough money to pay all her bills, and which unpaid creditor would hurt her the most if she doesn’t. Her only goal is to finish the task quickly and successfully, so she can get on with her life, or at least with her next task. In the latter case, the user wants to enter that pleasurable state as quickly as possible and stay there as long as possible. Anything that delays the start of his pleasure, or distracts him from it while he’s enjoying it, is even less welcome than the interruption of a work task. My parents want to see and talk with and gush over their grandchildren. Any attention that the program diverts to itself is a negative in either case.

I guess that gives an excellent description of how most of us handle tools, and in the generic form he is right, but not always.

I do agree with him on his fundamental laws, but there are cases where I think his “laws” does not fully comply with the world. Welcome to Jon’s corollary.

There is always an exception.

I do believe there are tools that also give the users a feeling of brand, exclusivity or just excellence to know that they are among a select group that uses exactly this tool.

I am a happy user of iPhone, but I am aware that this little device is not without faults, but there are user-groups out there that are quite vocal in their defense of everything Apple.

In this case there is obviously a link between the usability/functionality and the love of a brand, Apple probably would not have gotten their large number of fans without delivering reasonably well designed tools.

But as a main rule I think David has it spot on. We as developers need to open our eyes to focusing on the users and their needs even more than we have been doing so far.

I think that Apple, Google, WordPress and other market leading companies have understood this and are using this to their benefit.

Any user can start using an Apple iPhone with a little or no training. Apple software and devices is often simpler to use than their Microsoft counterpart. (But Microsoft is getting there)
Google has become the de-facto search-engine worldwide because of their speed and simplicity. They are continuing this tradition into their other tools, devices and services.
WordPress have become one of the leading blogging tools because they make it easy to maintain a web publishing site.

Please tell me what you think.

Posted from Bærum, Akershus, Norway.

The future, 2.0

Posted on 2008-11-01 by Jon Leirdal

As a follow up to my earlier fantasy of new possibilities regarding a documented generation I would like to blow out some steam regarding social software as well.

One of the problems we see today is that there are only a few people producing the information that is consumed by all the rest. Those reading are participating with tagging, bookmarking and rating of the content, but even this should be easier. The production of the content could also be easier.

So let us play with the idea of a documented world. On our way forward we have a few stops on the way. Some of them we are experiencing right now, among else by using Facebook, Linked-In, Plaxo or other social networking applications. By blogging and micro-blogging what we do and what interests us we are giving the world knowledge and information that can be used by other applications as what we often call value-added content.

Consider this, you are watching a video or listening to a podcast on the net regarding some information. The video or audio is tagged in such a way that as you play the content, different meta-information rolls by in tandem with the content, and the media player might then display related information based on automated searches as you watch. We are talking hypermedia that intelligently can give you information that you need or want. You will be able to decide where the information is gathered from.

In the next generation of social software I expect us to be able to increase the value for each other in even better and easier ways than today. And as always, the enabler of these features will always be technology.

So in the future, expect great things. Probably not some of the small ideas I present to you here. What we will see will probably be better.

And you will be a part of it. By easily producing content, and adding meta-information and grading what you see. The world will give you more of what you want and of what interests you.

Whether it is semantic technology or intelligent search engines, I bid welcome to interesting and feature rich social networks, in a documented world where you can have an even more enhanced life experience.

Soon, in a life near you!

Are you documented?

Posted on 2008-10-31 by Jon Leirdal

In the future: You will be able to rewind your whole life. Everything you have ever done, ever said, ever seen and ever heard will be reviewable, analysable, searchable and last, but not least, available.

We are getting closer to something a lot of people are calling the documented generation. Even today most of what we do is documented in some way or other. I myself have used my archive of digital images gathered over several years to remember when and where I visited some place. I’ve tagged all my images to simplify finding and searching, but I welcome the day this is an automatic process.

Most of your financial transactions are documented and traceable today when you use a debit or credit card for paying. Often you even use a membership card to get other benefits as well.

Most of your movements are traceable today, whether you use a car with an Autopass chip to pass trough highway toll boots, or you pass traffic cameras that watch the traffic. If you fill gas at a gas station you pay using a credit or debit card. When you go by train you use an electronic train ticket containing an RFID chip. When you go by plane you pay by card and you have to show a picture ID before boarding the plane.

Actually you are filmed by surveillance cameras almost everywhere, and most of what you do at work is logged on your computer.

All of your life is already stored on a plethora of computers all over the world and the internet.

These are known issues and something we have seen emerging over several years. Science Fiction authors have suggested this for years and the last decade these issues have been and are discussed in mainstream literature and media as well. And this is only the beginning.

What this will have to say for us personally, for our security against ID-theft and against the misuse of personal information is probably something a lot of people already have felt.
As long as our information is as available as it is, id-theft and misuse of information will become more and more common. The only way to prevent this is to change the routines and the systems available for those that need to verify our identity. They need a more secure way to verify that we are who we say we are, and they need to increase their efforts for protecting our data.

The way technology improves and evolves makes the possibilities for tracking and storing all kinds of information better each day. A new generation of people where everything they do is documented, from the day they are born until the day they die, is not that far away. The documented generation!

I would venture the guess that very soon we will see solutions in the consumer market that enables us to document events while they happen in new and exciting ways. Things like video-goggles that store everything you see, hear and say while attending a meeting or conference. The information might be stored on small, flexible, secure and large storage devices or directly on network storages units. This information may even be integrated with GPS-data and other environment information like weather or temperature, or with auto tagging features that adds other automatic metadata to the different parts of the recording. Face-, object and speech recognition will be automated and stored together with video and sound. And maybe not that much further in the future, this might be available in a 3D video with better than HD-quality.

The benefits that come with this kind of easily available information will of course be both a curse and a boon for us users. I often wonder where I met some people for the first time or what some customer said about some technical problem. Together with the stored information and multimedia we will probably be able to cross-reference our ”life-stream” with all other kind of information. With automated image and speech recognition everything we do, experience and say will be searchable and analysable.

What do you think? How soon will this be available? In 15 years? In 10 or 20 years? Will it be possible to rewind you whole life?

And as a small idea: When will we see the possibility for creating alternate experiences that makes it look like you have led a more exciting life than you really have? Will we see jamming equipment for jamming people from recording you on their life-streams? If you have an idea, please add a comment below.

PS: Yes I am aware of this little thing from the US, but I am saying that people are willingly going to do this just because they can.