subject: Why Busy Interfaces and Notifications Are a Waste of Time in IT [print this page] Many who work in the IT industry have very fast paced positions that require one to do many tasks in a given day. It's not uncommon for IT professionals to wear many hats; this is often the case because there simply is no else that is going to do the job at hand. Simply put, those who work in IT must be able to multitask and do so successfully.
Even so the tools that IT professionals use look overly complicated or even downright impossible to use. Some of the software packages that have to be used in certain facets of the industry such as backup managers, networking monitoring and administration tools simply have very bad user interfaces. It's as if the designers didn't even look at one of these applications and consider usability.
But having good user interface design is not just an element of aesthetics; having an application with a mindfully crafted interface is actually helpful for people. Remember, software is not used by machines. If there is a too much for the eyes to handle on the screen, the brain in turn becomes overwhelmed, which can affect productivity.
So having a bunch of bells and whistles constantly going off on a screen actually may not be as helpful in getting work done as one would think. Using an application that is simple to configure and use is actually better than one that has menu upon menu of options and is complex to the eyes. One big problem with this is that IT professionals may not even notice the effect that these applications are having on them: often times network performance management systems can have so much information spewing forth there is really no way one can truly get a handle on what is going on.
In terms of data management, sometimes one needs to set up filters in order to properly manage this. Instead of having data trigger notify someone immediately on their monitor, why not set up an alerting system that sends them an email to let them know what is going on. It seems that most of the time notifications really aren't so critical that they require instant alerting.
Keeping things simple is really the point of all this. In order to get things done sometimes that's what one has to do, and in IT getting the most out of your day is imperative to overall success.
Why Busy Interfaces and Notifications Are a Waste of Time in IT
