This British Computer Society (BCS) - Future visions blog began in January 2009. The blog is at http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConBlog.20, and the creators welcome participation and they describe it here -
"We all have a keen interest in the future because, as the saying goes, we are going to spend the rest of our lives there.
As we well know, computers, computing and technology in general are having an ever increasing impact on our lives, the economy and society.
The BCS is delighted to have brought together four distinguished bloggers to share their thoughts and concerns on wide-ranging areas such as whether Big Brother really is watching us, is it for our own good or should we be worried, the digital divide, social networking, can we really trust our lives to the 'cloud', the impact on UK plc, and how to develop engineers to build the increasingly complex and interdependent systems of tomorrow.
We welcome your thoughts and comments on the posts in this blog."
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Friday, April 24, 2009
Customer service - a defect in a technical society - Professor Roger James
This summary br Professor Roger James - http://www.rogerjames.net/ - University of Westminster, for a talk given the the BCS (Bristish Computer Society) Sociotechnical group https://owa.uwe.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.9926 summarises current problems and possible solutions for IT customer service. This highlights how better concentration on end-user requirements can save resources in the use of the technology.
I've copied the talk summary below -
"The genius of Google is you get a first rate technical experience with zero support [ie no customer service department]. Their whole business model is service free - relying instead on great technology, building and maintaining user competence and an ethos of self help. As a trivial but pertinent example there are approx 3500 books on Microsoft Office and 5 on Google apps - yet google apps offers substantially the useful elements of office. Should we consider this 'inbalance' a defect in Microsoft Office and should we anticipate a campaign on service quality akin to the six sigma product quality initiative over the last 20 years. Can one argue that technology is finally becoming sufficiently mature and ubiquitous to imagine this happening?"
I've copied the talk summary below -
"The genius of Google is you get a first rate technical experience with zero support [ie no customer service department]. Their whole business model is service free - relying instead on great technology, building and maintaining user competence and an ethos of self help. As a trivial but pertinent example there are approx 3500 books on Microsoft Office and 5 on Google apps - yet google apps offers substantially the useful elements of office. Should we consider this 'inbalance' a defect in Microsoft Office and should we anticipate a campaign on service quality akin to the six sigma product quality initiative over the last 20 years. Can one argue that technology is finally becoming sufficiently mature and ubiquitous to imagine this happening?"
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Benefits from Enabling End User Programming
My research is to test an approach of using digital technology, to make software and modelling development easier for computer literate end users. This would then enable them to solve problems to help their, and their teams’ work to be more productive. The current problem is that the communication and translation steps required between users, and software developers, and help desk are too many, and too varied, this results in cost, uncertainty, delays, confusion, and confrontation. The solution is for software developers to develop more customisable software that can be customised by end-users.
An example is user’s development of spreadsheets, this indicates user’s willingness to use and develop software to meet their needs, but productivity in spreadsheet development can be poor, as they are difficult to track, and share. More advanced software tools are often not available to users, or take too long to learn. Semantic Web technologies can provide a solution to this by provision of free and customisable, shareable, and fully visualised applications for use in particular sectors. Development of such applications, and their use in industry would be proof of this.
An example is user’s development of spreadsheets, this indicates user’s willingness to use and develop software to meet their needs, but productivity in spreadsheet development can be poor, as they are difficult to track, and share. More advanced software tools are often not available to users, or take too long to learn. Semantic Web technologies can provide a solution to this by provision of free and customisable, shareable, and fully visualised applications for use in particular sectors. Development of such applications, and their use in industry would be proof of this.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
More Customisable Software Systems
My experience of dealing with projects that create new software systems is that they are very ambitious, but not very modular or customisable. Under management pressure for meeting of timescales, they are often released too early with insufficient consultation with users. Then software developer's time is reallocated to a help desk, in order to deal with the problems caused by the release of software too early, too unchangeable and with too little user involvement.
A solution is to produce highly customisable software, so that the software team don't have to anticipate every problem the users will want to solve. Then many users with more advanced needs and computing abilities could customise software for their needs.
A solution is to produce highly customisable software, so that the software team don't have to anticipate every problem the users will want to solve. Then many users with more advanced needs and computing abilities could customise software for their needs.
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