Ray Ozzie on Digital Dashboards
Ray Ozzie says:
Unless you do very little work online, the concept of weaving all of your activity into a single web page couldn't be more misguided - from an efficiency and effectiveness standpoint.
I don't agree. First, it doesn't have to be a single web page - give me more integration into Outlook, or some other tool - that would be fine.
Ray likes the fact that email, IM, and other applications have their own UI's, and says we don't need a "digital dashboard". I disagree. I generally have two modes of working:
The first mode is when I'm writing code, or writing a document, or some other specific task; in that case, I agree with Ray - I need and use the best-of-breed application for that job. Word for writing documents; VS.NET for writing code; Quickbooks for accounting.
But the other mode is when I'm doing what I call "administrative" stuff - reading/responding to email, IMing, listening to voicemail, reading RSS feeds, etc. In this situation, Outlook is the tool I use for email, calendar, contacts, etc. But I also use Messenger for IM, the phone for voicemail, Radio and Aggie for news, Outlook Expess for newsgroups, and I'm sure a few other tools. In this case, all of these separate tools are a pain. In every case, I'm looking for information, and in some cases responding to it. In all cases, conceptually similar. Why can't I have all of my "administrative" tasks centralized into a single interface?
I think the problem is even worse for unsophisticated users. My mom uses Outlook Express to read her email, and Messenger to IM with her friends and family. I'm sure there are RSS-syndicated weblogs she might enjoy reading, but she would have to learn another tool to read these each day. Why wouldn't she want a single interface, showing her the day's email, new syndication items, and maybe a list of her friends that are currently online?
Ray says later in his article that the Universal Inbox concept has failed, and that people don't want their voicemail and email in the same place. I couldn't disagree more. Why shouldn't I be able to see my voicemail show up in my inbox? Then I could either listen to it on the phone, or listen to it via my email reader. I could forward an email notification of the message to my cell phone via Outlook. As it is now, I have to check two places for messages - Outlook, and my phone (actually more if you count my cell phone and home phone also). Why? [Ray's example of a Universal Inbox probably hasn't made a huge dent in the market, because it requires a new email address and voicemail number. I want to use my existing address, and my existing numbers - then we're talking about a compelling story.]
All that said, I have yet to see a great dashboard pulled off in practice. I think it could certainly be done, though. If I were to build one, I'd start with Outlook and build from there. [Greg Reinacker's Weblog]
8:51:10 PM 
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