cognitive Prosthesis for the Mobile worker Dr.Sawad Thotathil Care Coordinates MA, USA
If you are a mobile worker, what do you need to be effective?
1.”Remember Stuff”
You need a good memory • Passive memory – The type of information you need
sometime, somewhere. Ex: contacts • Active memory – the information that needs to sit on top
of your thoughts during your work Ex: Reminders
2. “know what I have to do today”
You need to coordinate your day’s work by answering the following questions • With whom? • Do what? • How? • Then what?
3. “Know What to do tomorrow”
You need to plan tomorrow’s work by • Organizing the list of tasks, activities, reminders • Collecting data today • Gathering information or knowledge today
4. “Know How am I doing”
Measure your performance by keeping a record of • What are the activities that you completed? • What were the outcomes of those activities? • Predictions about activities being completed?
how do you do it now?
Where do you have the information now? It lies scattered on paper, your desktop and cellphone • Email folders • Diary • Notes • Reminders • Calendars • Contacts • Lists
Where else do you find information? • Memory of conversations with others, of something you
have read or heard • Experience – yours or your colleagues
Most information is not recorded and what is recorded is neither retrievable nor organized in a useful manner
Mobile as cognitive prosthesis • Always with you • Always on
All you need is to have is an application that understands your worklife and • Is an extension of your memory • Knows what you need to do today • Aids in planning for tomorrow • Records what happened
Barriers to ‘Mobilizing’ the workforce • Rare to find an off the shelf app that understands your
business correctly • No IT resource or budget to design and maintain a mobile
application
Solutions for small or medium businesses • Platforms like Salesforce allow you to deploy apps easily • Cost of development, deployment and maintenance is
lower • All you need is expertise to translate your business needs
into an app • These platforms allow incremental development avoiding
costly failures as well as giving the opportunity to create small wins for better adoption
SAWAD72@YAHOO.COM