Digital Strategy, Design and Development
Digital Strategy, Design and Development
It’s World Usability Day and this year its been marked by a focus on greener travel and by visiting the site you can measure your carbon footprint.
Does this have anything to do with usability?
Absolutely, from the site the mission of usability is described as “‘Making Life Easy’ and user friendly” and in that respect our transport needs not only to be ‘enviromentally friendly’ but also easy to use and access. There is a big role for convergence technology in helping improve our environmental record. For example teleconferencing is a great cost effective way of bringing people together across the world for regular meetings, without the cost of flights, trains and transfers. I was once asked at very short notice to attend a meeting in London (about 200 miles from my North West base), in case I was ‘needed’. This meeting was scheduled for 20 minutes and there was a vague chance that some technical questions might come up that needed answering. It would have cost close to £200 to travel and have taken at least half-a-day out my schedule with traveling. My solution was simple; I gave the meeting hosts my phone number and said I would be by the phone during the scheduled time, if a question came up and they needed my input they could call me. It worked fine.
Telephone and video conferencing are widely available technologies and increasingly are helping businesses make better use of their financial resources, improve efficiency and reduce their environmental impact. There are other convergence technologies that can help bring added value and greater efficiency to a business, 3 Sheep would love to discuss those options with readers. The example I used in this post was extreme but the solution was simple and worked really well. It used technology any business has access too, was usable and brought people together cheaply and without costing the earth. What ways can technology help your business reduce cost and environmental impact?
