How to make mobile knowledge workers more effective using mobile technologies?

1. COGNITIVE PROSTHESIS FOR THE MOBILE
WORKER
Dr.Sawad Thotathil
Care Coordinates
MA, USA

2. IF YOU ARE A MOBILE WORKER,
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BE
EFFECTIVE?

3. 1.”REMEMBER STUFF”

4. 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

5. 2. “KNOW WHAT I HAVE TO DO TODAY”

6. You need to coordinate your day‟s work
by answering the following questions
• With whom?
• Do what?
• How?
• Then what?

7. 3. “KNOW WHAT TO DO TOMORROW”

8. You need to plan tomorrow‟s work
by
• Organizing the list of tasks, activities, reminders
• Collecting data today
• Gathering information or knowledge today

9. 4. “KNOW HOW AM I DOING”

10. 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?

11. HOW DO YOU DO IT NOW?

12. Where do you have the information now?
It lies scattered on paper, your desktop and cellphone
• Email folders
• Diary
• Notes
• Reminders
• Calendars
• Contacts
• Lists

13. Where else do you find information?
• Memory of conversations with others, of something you
have read or heard
• Experience – yours or your colleagues

14. MOST INFORMATION IS NOT RECORDED AND
WHAT IS RECORDED IS NEITHER
RETRIEVABLE NOR ORGANIZED IN A USEFUL
MANNER

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. SAWAD72@YAHOO.COM