O'Reilly editor Andy Oram articulates a great insight in his piece, Thinking Outside the Outbox:
I was reminded of this while glancing at this Microsoft article on creating Digital Dashboards. The summary epitomizes the perspective Andy described: "Digital Dashboards provide users with one single interface through which they can view information from a variety of sources that have been chosen specifically for that user." (Emphasis, mine.)
"Just as programmers tend to make tools that are comfortable for other programmers, some companies aim products at customers like them. And it happened that Microsoft struck it rich catering to companies with similar cultures and needs....The problem can be summarized as this: Microsoft views end-user collaboration as part of a uniform, department-wide or company-wide system serving technically unsophisticated staff with no independent needs of their own, where the distribution of software is controlled by a benevolent system administrator who makes sure nothing buggy is sent out."
I was reminded of this while glancing at this Microsoft article on creating Digital Dashboards. The summary epitomizes the perspective Andy described: "Digital Dashboards provide users with one single interface through which they can view information from a variety of sources that have been chosen specifically for that user." (Emphasis, mine.)