Further Development of My Research Topic

84 days, 21 hours, 59 mins and 07 seconds

till my Churchill Trip - 11th May - 13th July 2012

Well time is moving on and the date of my leaving is drawing near. I am finding the more I talk about my trip and its research the more it helps me to clarify what I hope to achieve. I initially was looking at the usability aspect of mobile technology from the perspective of four view points. They being:

1. The User,
2. The Developer,
3. The Manufacturer, and
4. Business

But as the research I am doing is in relationship to what we can achieve in helping our field workers in the area of Child Protection. I have now been able to arrange meetings with three organisations which are doing work in this area and using mobile technology. 

The mobile technology space is close to the coal face as they say. Not as close as I would have hoped as I never considered the physical issues and intimidation of technology on our clients. These are issues which would need to be addressed but will not be part of my research. So to better understand where this fits I started to picture the data path in which the first part is to capture the data as soon as practical. This is the space that I will be concentrating on mainly but understanding the whole data path I believe is important as well as highlighting other areas of research to tie the whole process.

Data Path and My Area of Research

To better understand the topic of the data path I have come up with the following drawing.

The capture of data starts with the client, but the digital capture could happen sometime after that. Once it has been captured it is then transmitted either wireless or via a network. The data is then placed into a system, analysed, distributed and from there the agent is then able to interact with that data to provide the best service. 


Along this path are many points of quality control and distribution, sharing of that information with the relevant and authorised bodies. The task at hand is to capture that data while maintaining the quality of information. Get it to a central system to be analysed and then shared with the authorised and appropriate support services. These are the many challenges and much work is needed in both to understand the stakeholders within the path of data and the human element. 


The opportunities to analyse and  carry out some predictive analysis is enormous so are the consequences if we get it wrong. The important part of this whole exercise is not to forget that we are dealing with people and some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The out comes and benefits and outcomes when we have it right can also be enormous.


My research is that initial data capture. I am specifically looking at the technology that is on offer and how we can enable staff in the field to do their job with the complexity. We need to make it intuitive and simple. Understanding how people work with the technology, how developers design and build their software on those devices as well as the manufacturers of the devices. An finally the agencies and businesses who have the task and understanding how to engage them to better understand how they can influence and impact on what is delivered.


On my trip I will be meeting other organisations that are using mobile technology in the field and understand how they use and benefit form it. How did they go about designing and implementing their solutions? Was it design with the user in mind or where they an after thought? Or, where they never considered and the direction and application was driven from the technical and functional aspects as perceived by a developer?


There are many questions and I dare say I will not get all the answers but I will have a far better understanding and then be able to communicate that understanding to others. Hopefully that understanding can and will have an impact on how we do our jobs.