With companies looking to save money, time and become more efficient, there is a growing appetite for tools and applications that allow businesses to run and develop projects without the need for face-to-face meetings. But do the new generation of project collaboration tools live up to the hype?
In today's world of global business, organisations are increasingly looking to online collaboration and project management tools to help manage teams, plan tasks, and improve productivity. Tools such as Basecamp, Huddle, Google Wave and DeskAway offer benefits to companies in collaborative working and centralised project and task management. As these tools infiltrate the corporate firewall, employees are increasingly looking beyond Outlook and Microsoft Word, signalling a cultural shift in the way that organisations work. As such, there are a number of user experience requirements that need to be addressed in designing a successful and useful addition to a company’s daily operations.
To succeed, collaboration tools must be more efficient than popular methods of communication currently used. The user needs to understand the value of such tools and apply them effectively to the needs of their organisation. To do this, managers must clearly define the context in which these tools will be used. For example, a co-located team is likely to find more benefit in face-to-face meetings. But in an environment with distributed teams, or multiple teams engaged on a common project, these tools come into their own.
Google Wave
So in the light of the benefits, why did Google Wave ‘fail’? In August this year, Google announced that the user adoption for their online collaboration tool was not as they would have liked and as a result, stopped developing Wave as a stand-alone product. It is perhaps unfair to compare tools like Huddle and Basecamp to Google Wave. Google Wave is essentially an enabling tool rather than a project management tool and not necessarily something which Google intended to compete with.
There are numerous reasons why companies start using collaboration tools. They introduce an ‘accountability', management and control system, allowing deadlines and tasks to be outlined, conversation trails to be documented and schedules to be viewed by all members of a project. Users have confidence that they are working on the latest version of a document and discussions are all recorded so there are clear decisions and a single version of "the truth". Basecamp for instance also works with a variety of iPhone apps and widgets. For example the ‘Insight’ app allows users to get a status of their projects, assign and complete tasks, post messages and comments and add time logs on a simple user interface.
Since adoption of these tools requires a cultural shift in terms of how we communicate, the transition needs to be seamless. Incorporating add-ons for ingrained tools such as Outlook would allow users to merge applications easily, keeping all data in one accessible place. The interfaces should reflect commonly used applications to aid integration and provide users with a sense of familiarity. Understanding user experience is essential, as well as having a firm grasp of how these tools will be used to support a range of needs. Clear calls to action should allow users to easily undertake common tasks, for example, creating documents, assigning tasks or inviting people to the group.
Google Wave offers real-time chat and it appears its aim was to extend beyond the instant chat / email process. Although it didn’t reach wide-spread adoption, it has been an interesting experiment in real-time collaboration that we may see developing in another, unforseen direction, as so often happens with internet initiatives. It was a solution looking for a problem, unlike project management tools like Basecamp that offer clear-cut fixes to readily identified problems.
Whilst collaboration tools may not replace or be as effective as face-to-face communication, they offer a solution to geographically dispersed teams who require a complete overview and shared access to necessary information. The key to the success of this form of collaboration within any business, is applying it to the workplace in a way that will be time and cost effective, while ensuring members of the group actively work and engage with the tool so that usage becomes as frequent as that of email accounts.
Written collaboratively on Huddle by User Vision's Chris Rourke, Stephen Denning, Laurene McCafferty and Ross Philip
Twitter: @UserVision
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