"How can we help people make the right decisions - choose the right options in this constantly changing world?" Sounds like a noble dream... a philosophical question...A good case for a modern age Sidharta to leave the royal pleasures in search of the answer...Well, almost...Last week 500 technologists, business leaders, analysts and psychologists converged at the fringes of the Arizonian desert to reflect on the same question...sharing their experiences, observations, opportunities and insights
The event - Discover 2011 - the annual User Conference hosted by Endeca Technologies, Inc., a search and business intelligence (BI) company featured dozens of customer-led sessions, that deliberated on how the simplicity of Search combined with the power of BI can transform their organizations by enabling business users, partners and end users to make better decisions.
The sessions opened with a bang with Paul Sonderegger (Chief Strategist & Ex Principal Analyst at Forrester Research) who set the right context to the event...He painted a picture of
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A world that is getting more digitized every day
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"Abundance of choices" and the resulting "Scarcity of attention" faced by fellow human beings in this Digital world
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The importance of sifting through the ever growing, abundance of data and to "Guide" the users in their daily decisions
This was followed by and that too quite seamlessly by another insightful talk on "How we take decisions". Jonah Leher author of best seller "How we decide" took the audience into the realm of neuroscience to explain the complex events happening in our own 3 pound supercomputer - Brain - during our mundane day to day decisions, like picking up a box of cereal from the store shelf... How the cognitive centers and centers of emotions work together in guiding us to our choices...
Let me take a pause here...Shouldn't the "Information workbenches" mimic or facilitate this process? Every application that we build thus becomes an information exchange that will help users to experience predictability in their daily transactions.
On the same note, it was quite heartening to see a world that we visualized...a strategy that we charted out almost 4 years back, turn out into reality. This approach called for a fresh look at information management and attempted to perceive next gen information management as
An art of intelligently delivering the most "relevant" information to the user for that specific context
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An infrastructure that can
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A realm of complete user empowerment, where the users interactively discover their needs and choices
Interesting isn't it...Now the questions in front of us will be, "Will this impact the IT fabric of an organization?" or "Will this change that way we design and develop applications?" The short answer is "Yes"
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The locus of control will shift from Information to the User and User experience will have to be addressed and managed comprehensively
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Analytics and Digital Channels will converge - The technology domains, those were kept in administrative silos rather artificially will come together to address the need of the Digital User, whether it is an employee or a consumer
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Next Generation Information management initiatives will call for even closer functioning of Business and IT
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Explosion of customer touch points will mandate organizations to develop "Seamless and Consistent" Customer Experience Management as a core capability