Using technology to improve communication during crises

'Hotline' by Alex under a CC license

Despite how advanced mankind may look, when disasters strike disruptions do take place and, sometimes, human lives are put at risk (the earthquake in Nepal being a recent major such natural disaster). Regardless of the type of disaster, communication is essential both for the people in the affected zone and for the staff of the response teams.

Under normal circumstances, in or close to urban areas, voice and data communication are not normally a problem, even when demand is high as, for instance, happens in big concerts, conferences or other major events.

But what are the challenges at the time of a major disaster? Are we ready to put the technology we have available into the best possible use in order to handle the crisis in the best possible way?

Is e-mail dead?

I don't think so (as I've argued in the past). Not yet. But it has seen better days, at least as a means of personal communication.

Is internet access a critical service?

Internet access is a mission-critical factor for most modern businesses. Even for individuals, internet access is amongst the top priorities covering both work and leisure reasons and has increasingly found its way to bars, hotels of any price range, libraries and public spaces. At a political level, Information Society (a part of which is internet infrastructure and services) is considered to be a tool for maintaining and strengthening human rights, while there are voices supporting a further upgrade of internet access as a civil/ human right.

'Internet open 7 days til late'
by duncan c under a CC license

Having said that,  the penetration of internet access across the population varies a lot from country to country (and from region to region). Recent usage statistics indicate that internet access ranges between about 26% of the population for Africa to about 88% for North America. For Europe the figure is at about 70%, ranging from 42% for Ukraine to 98% for Luxembourg. While increasing trends exist in nearly all regions world-wide and internet has established presence even in remote areas, access to internet is still far from, say, access to mobile telephony services, where, for instance, in Europe there are 125 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants.

Despite the fact that a small-but-significant of the population don't have the means to access the internet, wherever internet access has been established it has had a marked impact on business practices, both in the private and the public sectors. Communication, ordering, data gathering, information dissemination, archiving, networking, etc., are processes that tend to be done exclusively via IT and internet resources in places where such resources are available, of course.

But is internet access being treated as a critical service?

Face-to-face meetings. Still much needed.

'Penguins have a meeting' by
Laura Taylor under a CC license

Businesses and people have grown past the local scale for quite some time now making communication an obvious priority. Despite the increasing number of communication means available, face-to-face meetings still persist. That happens in spite of their higher cost compared to other commonly available alternatives. Why is that? Are they truly irreplaceable?

In all the jobs I had so far, the king of communication means was e-mail. Formal or informal, long or short, pre-run by the management or not. Yes, I have had the experience of the occasional paper-printed letter and, unfortunately, a bit more often, the experience of its distant cousin, the fax message. And then it has been the phone. Plenty of my working hours have been spent there. Every once in while, though, I had to arrange for or participate in face-to-face meetings. So far, that has been with clients or potential clients, project partners, funding bodies, policy makers, working group members, colleagues and peers, top management executives, middle management, trainees, sector stakeholders, ..., you name it...

Have all those face-to-face meetings been worth the time and the cost, especially when international travel was involved? Yes. Even when the hard objectives of the meeting were not met.

You see, when you interact with others in the real word, you exchange much more information than that which words alone convey. This can be via body language, via facial expressions, via interactions with others that may be present but not part of the meeting, via comments that although irrelevant to the topic of the meeting convey information when perceived in context, etc. More importantly, this exchange of information goes both ways. At the end of most of my meetings I had a clear feeling on where things were going and that, in turn, helped me choose my follow-up actions accordingly.

Face-to-face meetings are engaging, too. Agreement (or disagreement) on actions feels firmer. Trust (or distrust) is established more easily and so are other things, such as tolerance, patience and understanding - all necessary from time-to-time in successful, durable collaborations - that we exhibit in our everyday life but are harder to do when using, say, written means of communication.

I admit that I haven't done any hard-fact cost-benefit analysis. But face-to-face meetings still get a lot of praise, having several valid reasons in their support. True, virtual meetings, including video conferences (conference calls never really appealed to me), have a lot of potential but they also come with their own disadvantages, as people in the meeting consultancy side say. Of course, when resources are running thin, one can always try to make the best out of virtual meetings. After all, face-to-face meetings do have their own peculiarities :-)

(as anything that involves people)

 

(but are still better than conference calls)

When pictograms use icons of the past...

'YVR Pictograms' by
Tom Magliery under  a CC license

A pictogram is an image, often depicting a physical object. that conveys a specific message. Pictograms are meant to facilitate the perception of a message, regardless of the language skills of the people exposed to them. Well, the latter in some cases is rather optimistic. Of course, in the case of widely used pictograms, such as road signs, very high positive recognition rates can be expected. But is that the case for all pictograms?

Pictograms have been increasingly used everywhere. The chances are that the ones we come across daily go much beyond the Public information symbols (of ISO 7001:2007), the laundry symbols or the chemical hazard symbols (GHS 2013 revision). Indeed, remote controls, televisions, software programs, smartphones, etc., rely a lot on the use of pictograms, rather than descriptive text, in order to be operated by the user as intented.

Some symbols are abstract so we get to learn their meaning. For instance, the volume level symbol on a remote normally looks like that:

Although the displayed symbol on a laptop might be like that:

 

Other pictograms are more interesting. For instance, the symbol for saving a file:

That is a 3.5'' diskette and while I have used plenty of those, the new generations may have never held one in their lives. The same goes for opening a file. The filing system depicted is still in use in many places but is becoming increasingly uncommon sight:

The paste function is associated with a clipboard icon. Clipboards are still in use but, again, they are not that common amongst young people. Palettes are not a common sight, too, although they are in use by professionals. Still, they are used in several pieces of drawing software.

Voice messages are often behind a pictogram that depicts a magnetic tape:

E-mail clients and webmail services typically use the old, common snail-mail envelope:

Some older e-mail clients used the US-style mailbox with the flag:

Many sound-processing-capable programs use the old-style microphone symbol to indicate record:

There are numerous other cases. For instance the old-school phone handset pictogram (that means "make a call"), the bookmark symbols, the calliper symbols (for measuring distances in photo-editing software), the gear or wrench symbols in software (usually leading to the settings sections), the film reel symbol (indicating video), the album symbol (indicating, well, a digital album), the binoculars and the magnifying glass symbols (search function - OK - both of these are in regular use), etc. But I think I'll end this section with the rabbit-eared TV symbol:

Similar problems exist in other fields, as well. Language expressions may refer to objects or practices of the past that are no longer used. That includes jargon, too (e.g., "radio buttons" in questionnaires that allow the respondent to select only one option). There are also sounds we don't hear often any more (such as the typewriter clicks in the typewriter song).

Employing pictograms to convey messages is not an easy task. Sometimes, they are artistic (e.g., pictogram movie posters). Sometimes they are fun but sometimes not so much. In some cases, if the pictogram fails to be understood, it could even be dangerous. This is particularly important when posting pictograms that will stay in place for tens or hundreds (or more) of generations, such as the warning signs in nuclear waste land burial sites.

It is clear that our world will continue to rely - increasingly - on pictograms. I'm sure that, as time passes, designers will get better in conveying messages in a graphical way and we will become better in interpreting in-context symbols.

Note: Clipart symbols obtained from CLKER (and are thought to be in the public domain).

Pressing that 'send' button....

'Mail Box' by zizzybaloobah
under a CC license

E-mail is nothing new. Actually, in terms of internet communication means, it is rather a dinosaur of communication.

Since e-mail's first steps in the '70s, lots have happened both to e-mail as a technology, itself, and its competing internet-based communication services. In 2012, the 3 main web-mail providers had over a billion users with Google leading the race. So far, e-mail looks as if it is here to stay for the decades to come. But do we really need it?

Back at e-mail's early days, it was soon understood that if e-mail would be any good for communication, it needed to be able to offer interoperability among networks, servers and clients. It achieved that following a development course strongly based on a series of (then) emerging standards, each adding new capabilities to the service. Thus, the early text-only services can now support attachments, formatting, multimedia contents, different recipient groups, etc.

E-mail was designed to emulate the classical snail-mail exchange in the digital world. Some of the associated terminology reflects that (e.g., CC). That is not necessarily a bad thing because, well, people do need to exchange information in an affordable, flexible, reliable and resilient way - I'm talking about information that would normally be delivered by snail mail some years before.

At this point, it would be useful to look at what people tend to do online. The following infographic (2012) can give us a few clues:



Infographic by- GO-Gulf


E-mail/ communication is a strong factor, taking some 19% of the online time. Social media, however, are ahead with 22%. Plus, the trends shown concern service niches well away of e-mail communication.

E-mail use seems to be declining amongst teens, who seem to favour instant messaging. E-mail seems to look a bit too formal and needs more time between typing the message and being ready to press 'send'. In fact, in several instant messaging services (e,g,, Skype) there is no 'send' button - the user can just press 'Enter'.

Personal experience also suggests that the bulk of my e-mail use could easily be replaced by instant messaging. I've caught myself using e-mail as an instant-messaging client from time-to-time, pressing 'reply', typing just a few words and pressing 'send', often 'forgetting' to change the subject line or re-check the recipients. From time-to-time, I also use e-mail as a 'mini-forum' service, exchanging comments with a small group of people. To be honest, that last thing often gives ground to considerable off-topic-discussions, with the occasional (polite) trolling but that happens when using personal e-mail so I guess it's OK.

Despite all those indications of e-mail's weaknesses, its biggest strengths are flexibility, acceptance and standardisation. All three are boring stuff but, really, they make a difference:

• E-mail is flexible in the sense that one can use it for short or long messages, to one or more recipients, with any formatting, attachments, etc. Contrary to that, most instant messaging solutions (Skype, WhatsApp, etc.) are much more limited in terms of formatting, message size, attachment options and recipient groups.
• Most likely recipients have an active e-mail address (businesses, public bodies, individuals, etc.). The same doesn't apply to instant messaging services (that thing with google+ and its messaging capabilities is a different story to user handles instead of e-mail addresses is a different story). Further to that, e-mail communication is considered as a formal means of communication in an increasing number of countries and organisations. Instant messaging services have the aura of 'informal' and 'casual'.
• At the technical level, e-mail services are well established. One can use any e-mail client to address any recipient and the chances are that the recipients will receive and be able to read the original message as the sender intended (most of the times, at least). If delivery fails for some reason, the system tells the sender what went wrong. Contrary to that, there is no true 'universal' instant messaging service. People tend to be restricted with the social medium of their choice.

So yes! We still need e-mail. While not impressive  anymore, it does what it does quite well. And by forcing us to press that 'send' button, it provides us some time to reflect on what we are about to send. The latter can be life-saving under many circumstances.

Work or pleasure, access to the internet is a must

'Internet' by transCam
under a CC license

It is that time of the year that colleagues, friends and myself have just been, currently are or plan to be on holidays. I couldn't help but notice that although most clearly state that they plan to "switch off", all be a few actually mean "do something different to work, have fun but keep in touch". And by that, they mean via social media, skype/viber/whatsapp/hangouts/etc., e-mail and the other digital means of communication.

WiFi accessed internet tends to be mainstream in hotel/ rooms, bars, cafes, and - practically - "everywhere". Yes, I've come across free internet access facilities in small and far away places (and, needless to say, I found that pleasantly surprising). On top of that, most smartphone owners tend to have a kind of data plan on their contract.

While the demand for internet connectivity itself is sufficient to explain the corresponding market development, I wonder how come people have shifted their habits so much. I mean, yes, people did use to send postcards in the past but that was about it. Were there "communication needs" to be satisfied that were technologically impossible to address? Or did the needs develop after the right technologies emerged? Is it a trend or is it here to stay?

This time, I'll leave it at this point. There have been opinions on that (and some research, as well) but I find it is still premature to write a bottom line, yet :-)

Distances

'The breakwater' by
Joris Louwes under a CC license

It's been ages since I 've last posted a few lines here.

It 's not that writing something down has become more difficult than it normally is. It's the lack of motivation for putting that extra effort in wrapping it up - the much needed step before hitting the 'publish' button.

Don't get me wrong, the paragraph above is not meant to be a kind of humble brag. Rather, it is just a plain reference to the common, school-grade essay-writing methodology.

But - hmmm -  I'm already diverging from the topic I had in mind, which - by the way - has nothing to do with either technology or innovation.

The other day I was talking with an old friend. A person who now lives several thousand miles away, with whom I haven't had a descent, full-scale conversation for months or even more. Silly, I know; especially in the age of internet/voip/social-something everywhere that we live in. Not that I didn't have valid excuses ready (I always do). Silly, perhaps also sad, but true.

At any rate, it was nice catching up, spending quite some time describing trivial details of everyday life, as if they did, really, matter.

And that was exactly what got me thinking.

It's not necessarily what one has to say. And it's not necessarily if it is technically easy or not to communicate a message at a certain time. It's the outcome of the feeling we are after that which defines the distance to a person and justifies the effort to communicate.

(OK, the lines above are 'a touch' more dramatic than they should. And, to be fair, plenty of the things we say during the day are part of our working life or inseparable aspects of our operation as 'normally functional individuals'. To such thing, the paragraph above does not apply. But if you place this part out of the communication equation, the rest seems to be fully up to us.)

Knock-knock

'cell phone' by
samantha celera under
a CC license

Despite being a Sunday today, I woke up early. It's one of the side effects of having to be at work at 07.30 on a daily basis, I guess.

I wasn't feeling particularly lazy so I had breakfast, did a bit of tidying-up (ouch!) and browsed the news. At about 11.30, I got in the mood picking up my mobile and catching up with friends.

So I try calling the first on the list.... no reply. OK. 11.30 might still be early for some. Another one came to my mind - and that was a phone call I had to do at some point during the day, regardless - but, again, no luck. Moving onto the third one, well, no luck there, as well. At that point I thought that, given the time of the day, I was really trying to get hold of the wrong kind of crowd. So I tried calling an uncle of mine and "volunteer" for an errand. And nope. Nobody there, too.

For some weird reason, knock-knock jokes started coming to my mind but I soon pulled myself together and went on with my day....

So, the key messages of today's experience are:

• Sunday mornings can be very quiet if you happen to wake up early.
• Sunday mornings can be very noisy, if you happen to choose to stay in bed but have a friend who tends to wake up early.
• Sunday mornings is the ideal time to be anti-social. Most likely, nobody will disturb you but, even if somebody does, you can just ignore them and they'll be OK with it.
• Still, Sunday mornings are waaaay better than Sunday evenings, with the exception of those Sunday evenings that are followed by a bank holiday Monday.

Note: I re-tried calling those people in the afternoon and, that time, my success rate was significantly higher.