Photo by elka_cz
My day at the bank (or, how will the future be more productive)
I was at the bank today in order to set up another account that will allow me to get some interest on my money. For some reason, I could see the bank clerk computer screen and I was watching her use of the computer.
I don’t know about you, but as someone who grew up with computer since he was ten, I feel very comfortable around computers. But this clerk wasn’t. And for someone like me, it was easy to see that. It is not that she did not get the job done; it was that she was doing it very inefficiently. She was using the mouse courser for things she could do with the keyboard, she used slow ways to move around text boxes, she deleted entire textboxes that she needed to fix instead of just correcting the word, etc. when the computer did not agree to accept my address because it had more that 30 characters, it took her a few minutes to get over that.
What she did in five minutes I could do in two. Not because I am smarter but because computers are a second nature for me.
That got me thinking. There are so many people today in service industries that computers are not a second nature for them. Think about that bank clerk. Show must have been working for the bank for 20 years, using paper and really old interfaces. She probably does not use a lot of computers on her day to day life. More importantly, she probably did not grow around computers. No matter how much training she will get, she will never be very efficient around a computer.
But that is changing. As computers get more common and kids are growing up using them, more and more people will feel natural around computers. And that means a boost of efficiency. Multiply the 3 minutes the bank clerk could have saved today by millions, and you get a pretty clear picture. Even if the current technology will stay the same, efficiency is going to improve, just because the people are going to get more natural at using it.
Elad
The Comparative Advantage 
January 15, 2009 at 4:13 pm
That’s true mate, most people in such positions are not very good with computers especially women.
You should see the children of today, they are masters with phones and computers and even know things that their parents don’t know.