The Cure for Technology Overload

Thursday, August 2, 2007 by David Adkins

One of my teenage sons and I had a discussion recently about the art of texting.  I always watch in amazement as he receives and sends text messages with such fluidity and lightning speed that the phone seems more like an appendage than an accessory. 

The other day, he challenged me to give him a sentence to type on the phone.  He bet me that he could quickly type a perfectly spelled and punctuated message.  The hook was that he would do so entirely without looking at the keypad.  I took the bait and gave him a sentence to type.  In but a few seconds he had completed the message—typed perfectly and with flawless punctuation.  Thinking he couldn't repeat this rather amazing feat twice in a row, I challenged him to try again, but this time with a new, more difficult sentence.  The result was yet another perfect, no-look text message.  When I type a text message, I can never seem to get it right the first time, and I look at the keypad! 

A recent article I read on a news website described how technology has become virtually invisible to young people.  They're eager to explore it and they gravitate toward it naturally without intimidation or fear of unintentionally breaking something. 

In contrast, I, as a more "mature" technology consumer, often feel overloaded by it.  I use many applications at work and at home, and sometimes I have difficulty remembering how to perform certain software-related tasks, particularly with applications that I use less frequently.  As a result, I have developed this rather intensive love-hate relationship with software help.  I rely upon it to bail me out in a pinch, but like many software users, I dread having to reference it because it's just not very convenient, and once I find relevant information, I still have to bounce back and forth between windows as I attempt to interpret or follow the instructions. 

To illustrate my point about technology overload, I had to learn how to use a new application recently to design a website.  Although it was frustrating to have to struggle through the learning curve, I eventually learned enough, using a mix of help resources and my own experimentation, to complete the task.  However, it was clearly not a very efficient way to go about it.  I think what was most noteworthy about the experience was that diving headlong into learning how to use another new application wasn’t nearly as fun for me as it used to be.  I’ve got better things to do with my time these days than maintain my mastery of dozens of software applications, not to mention having to expend additional time and energy to learn new ones.  I'm sure many of you can relate.

What I absolutely love about performance support, workflow-based instruction, learning at the moment of need, or whatever name one wishes to ascribe to it, is how much sense it makes from a learning or user assistance standpoint.  Showing software users in simple step-by-step fashion how to perform a procedure in the context of the application workflow is the simplest, most cost effective way to help them complete the task at hand.  That’s all most people need in order to be competent enough to complete a task.  They really don't need to know, or in most cases want to know, about all of the subtleties of an application's interface or feature set.  There's just too much to remember these days.

At Transcensus, we are passionate about the philosophy of performance support.  We've built our company around it.  I’m confident you’ll see this reflected in the truly exciting performance support technology that our company has developed.  We look forward to working with you to help you begin realizing the tremendous benefits that a performance support system can offer.  I guarantee you'll be convinced of the positive impact that such an implementation can have on your organization.