I recall how workplaces and work were intertwined several decades back when my dad used to go to work. Going to work equalled going to office. Workplace was a ‘place’ of work. What a stark and poignant contrast to how we perceive work today, and how ‘place’ has now been replaced with ‘space’, conveying fluidity and a collapse of boundaries.
Digital workspaces have meant relinquishing control of the ‘physical’, to gain powerful outcomes using ‘digital’. But do enterprises take stock of which digital technologies being offered to employees actually empower them, instead of compounding productivity challenges with complicated interfaces or invading worker privacy?
The ultimate function of technology, however complex it may be, has always been to simplify, and not to overwhelm. Digital workspaces, therefore, when they do not fall within the confines of an office need systems that are intuitively intelligent, and user-centric.
The Pulitzer prize winning playwright and essayist, Arthur Miller, once said, “Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.”
Going by that ethos, an intelligent experience is not just about apps and data interfacing with the user, but the entirety including apps, tools, data, cloud, etc meaningfully interacting with the user and teams.
So, how can we achieve having a user-friendly, reliable digital workspace?
The solution to this is human-centric design and intelligent systems that help create seamless experiences that merge human and system tasks together. A quick look at key vendors in this space will indicate that many have moved strongly into the single interface approach, offering easy to customize controls; greatly enhancing user interaction.
Without this intelligence being part of the workspace experience, the best technological line-ups can just remain as milestone around IT neck, limiting its ultimate potential.