At a recent HubSpot conference in Boston, I sat in on a session on Calm Technology led by Amber Case (@caseorganic, or web). Fascinating stuff really and the best talk at the conference in my opinion.
The terms 'Calm Computing' and 'Calm Technology' were coined by PARC researchers in 1995, focusing on the promise of technology and computing to reduce complexity in our lives by featuring and informing us of things that are really important and by running everything else in the periphery.
There is a lot of wonderful material here.
Does it apply to field service? Very much so. We’re in this rush to equip field engineers with more information via mobile applications. The important questions to ask are:
- Who does all of this information really benefit?
- Is the information available in the right context?
The intent of mobilizing field agents isn’t to replace the time that they spent on paper with the time they spend on a mobile device. Its to replace the paper time with customer or work time.
We're running a mobile field service research survey. Currently, 20% of organizations responding (n=75) indicate that their field engineers spend too much time on their mobile devices, as opposed to working. Another 30% don't know. It’ll be interesting to see the final results.
If you have a field service organization, let us know what type of information you’re providing in the field. We’ll share the final results when ready in early December. I’d love your comments on the applicability of calm technology in field service. I sure can do with more of it in my personal life.