Technology has been a significant driver of enhanced productivity over the last several decades. Now many are predicting that AI will be the next major revolution.
However, the current crop of digital tools (including AI) is, by and large, aimed at backroom tasks and personnel. Front line workers are certainly less well-served, even in service industries.
This is partly down to the nature of the tasks undertaken by these front-line personnel but even where appropriate or useful tools might be available, they are often let down by the way in which they are intended to be used – by the user interface (UI).
Most backroom and office staff are used to computers and the over-arching UI but most frontline personnel are not. They find it difficult to adapt to interface concepts (windows and cursors, for example) that are new to them and fail to relate to machine interfaces they may use elsewhere in their lives.
This is not solely a training issue. There is a need to relook at user interface principles and practice and design new forms of interface, more appropriate to this new set of users.
Workers who struggle to integrate new digital tools into their workflows because of poor interface design are not going to improve their productivity. They will become frustrated, less motivated snd even disengaged.
Potential productivity improvements may not be realised or may be sub-optimal.