The library card catalogue
Do you remember when the local library did away with the card catalogue in favour of an electronic index?
The benefits of an electronic index are self-obvious.
For the library staff, books are more efficiently processed and tracked. By linking to a central database, the content of the index can be uniform across many facilities. For the library patron, it becomes easier to locate books and search for resources.
I remember when the local library replaced the card catalogue with three workstations running a Windows based catalogue. The user interface was fairly simple. A field for entering in the author’s name. A field for the title. A field for searching by keyword. Use the arrow keys to navigate through the choices and hit one of the function keys to return back to the search.
Really, anyone could figure it out. But just to be safe, the library pasted instructions to the top of each keyboard and had little signs with step by step instructions beside each monitor.
It should have been a banner year for the library, but I would say that the year the library adopted the system was likely their most inefficient, backed up, ever. Wait times increased. Books would sit in piles waiting to be processed. The staff were run ragged.
Why?
People were avoiding the computers. Wouldn’t touch them. Instead, a small crowd would form in front of the staff desk as people queed to ask whether a particular book was available and where they could find it.
The assumption was that people didn’t understand the computers. Bigger signs were made. Instructions were simplified.
The computers remained largely unused and the crowd remained. The staff began to escort people over to the computers and demonstrate for them how to perform a search. Most, got it after the initial demonstration, but there were some who were back for their fifth or sixth demo and would likely take the demo as just part and parcel of finding their book.
It wasn’t until the staff stopped entering in the data that the crowd finally dispersed. The staff member would sit the patron in front of the computer. The patron would be the one to type in the info at the staff member’s guidance.
It wasn’t that the system was hard. It wasn’t that the patrons weren’t smart. What had happened was the patrons had convinced themselves that the system was complex and far beyond their ken. They were intimidated and gave up without trying. Nobody wants to look the fool.
What systems does your company have in place that sit unused because the staff is intimidated by the tools? What sales are you missing because your customers have convinced themsleves they could never make use of your products? What could you be doing that you’re not because it means facing something new; because it means you may make a mistake?
