{"id":27,"date":"2019-03-12T09:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T01:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.praxonomy.com\/blog\/?p=27"},"modified":"2023-03-15T19:56:47","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T19:56:47","slug":"things-to-consider-when-designing-technology-for-boards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.praxonomy.com\/blog\/things-to-consider-when-designing-technology-for-boards\/","title":{"rendered":"Things to Consider When Designing Technology for Boards"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We all use technology everyday whether its reading e-mails, surfing the web, booking a taxi, restaurant, holiday, doing our banking etc. and hence we are very familiar with the applications that we use and are comfortable with how they work, how to log into them and how to navigate to where we want to get to. However, there are some apps that we use less frequently, perhaps once every one to two months where our familiarity with the app isn\u2019t quite so ingrained, and we can stumble remembering how to log on, how things work and how quickly we can get to where we want or need to be within the app.<\/p>\n

I believe that board portals<\/a> fall into this category, more for the business end users (Board members\/Directors) rather than for the administrators of the Board Meetings who are likely to be using the software on a more regular basis.<\/p>\n

With the above in mind, it got me thinking about how a good board portal (such as Boardlogic<\/a>) should be designed to make its use easy and straightforward for the “occasional users”. Many years ago I was recommended to read an excellent book called The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman.<\/p>\n

The following is a brief extract from the book which I think gives us a clue as to why we, at times, find apps baffling and frustrating in equal part.<\/p>\n

\u201cDesign is concerned with how things work, how they are controlled, and the nature of the interaction between people and technology. When done well, the results are brilliant, pleasurable products. When done badly, the products are unusable, leading to great frustration and irritation. Or they might be usable, but force us to behave the way the product wishes rather than as we wish.\u201d<\/blockquote>\n

So when we use a piece of software often, we learn, quite quickly, how it works, its\u2019 little idiosyncrasies and how to get to where we want to be quite quickly without trawling through the whole app. However, when we don\u2019t use a piece of software very often, and it has not been designed with the occasional users in mind, it can be very frustrating and quite often be cast onto the too difficult pile. <\/p>\n

So what do I want to see in a board portal?<\/p>\n