Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Reality Bytes #18 – Hardware and users (turning it off and on again)

Transcript

Reality Bytes #18 – Hardware and users (turning it off and on again) · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, change Makers to the deck show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:06
Let's get into it. Hello, everybody, welcome back to Reality Bites.
0:12
A bit of a bit of a skeleton crew today, but a but
0:15
an exceptional one as ever. We've got Oriana with us. Hi, Orianna,
0:19
how are you? Hello, We've got Megan with us. How's it
0:22
going? Megan? Just back from your holiday? Yeah, just back from
0:26
Guatemala. It was I'm glad to be back then? Sorry? Yeah,
0:29
are you really? Are you? Very sounded like a very exciting trip.
0:33
I don't know if I don't know if I buy the glad to be back
0:35
stick today, To be honest with you, yeah, I almost didn't come
0:38
back, but here I am. It was touching. Go. Well,
0:41
we're glad to have you back, Marian, Next thing Cannon Reality Bites both
0:45
and we've got we've got Sam with us as well. How's it going,
0:47
Sam? Hey, it's going good. Tom always happy to be part of
0:50
your Skeleton cruise. Skeleton Cruise are the best cruise skeleton Booze cruise. That's
0:55
what we've got here. That's right. Hey, Okay, So so you
0:59
know anybody who listens regularly to this show knows that part of the part of
1:03
the whole concept is, you know, we try and bring dual perspectives to
1:07
the to the tech and IT workplace stories of the day, and that that
1:12
dual perspective tends to be, you know, the perspective of our of our
1:17
content writers and analysts and experts represented today in in Salmon Meghan of course,
1:23
and alternatively, the perspective of our of our technical experts on the show,
1:30
people who who engage with with customers and the technology itself and who who who
1:34
you might say, and some do really know what they're talking about, represented
1:38
by Oriana today of course. Um what we we've got a slight a slight
1:42
twist on that on that structure today because we're going to be talking about hardware
1:48
and and those of us who who represent, if you will, the sort
1:52
of analyst content side of the reality bites equation. We are now going to
1:57
put on a different hat. And that hat is a hat we we have
2:00
very comfortably, which is the hat for IT user, aka the hat of
2:04
somebody who doesn't know what's going on with their with their laptop, their headphones,
2:09
anything at all, and is completely subservient to the subservient. It's completely
2:15
it's completely at the mercy at the whim of it in helping helping us to
2:20
get through issues and problems and ensure we can work and be productive. Um.
2:24
The idea for the show comes from comes from Sam. And then of
2:30
course I should say we also represented in orient space by by It itself.
2:34
Um, And the idea from the show comes from Sam. Who's Who's you
2:37
know, if I'm not mistaken, Sam, We've seen on the deck Hub
2:38
recently we've seen a few pieces broach this topic. UM. I know one
2:44
that stood out and did very very well, and we recently recorded a deck
2:46
show about it concerned the the tech bar, right, yeah, yeah,
2:53
yeah, the the tech Cafe, which was that a customer had but a
3:00
kind of been a theme across different companies kind of tech bars inspired by Apple's
3:06
Genius Bar. And the piece has done well though. And this is basically
3:08
as you say, it's inspired by Apple's Genius Bar. And it's almost like
3:12
an evolution of the old IT office. Right. You know, we're all
3:15
sort of once upon a time used to kind of going and knock it on
3:19
the door up on the fourth or fifth floor, you know, and going
3:22
to see everybody when you had an issue and you spilt as I did once
3:25
a coffee all over your laptop or whatnot. And then everyone everyone went remote
3:30
and it became this kind of completely virtualized in personal service almost and now we're
3:35
all coming back to the office and such like, and the this kind of
3:40
more refined in person service becomes If you will, do you think Sam,
3:45
the future of the IT user interaction? Yeah, I would say so.
3:50
I think that you know, a lot of companies are looking for kind of
3:54
reasons to have people want to go into the office, especially when it comes
4:00
to you know, people who have been working remotely for the past two years
4:04
or it's difficult for them to do so. And I think a kind of
4:06
more um personal hands on relationship between IT and the employees that are using all
4:15
this technology is kind of a great way to kind of get people want want
4:20
to be coming into the office um to kind of have their problems solved in
4:25
a much more kind of candid and personal manner rather than you know, through
4:30
different IT applications. And what about your own experience with technology, Sam,
4:38
How how sophisticated is your understanding of your hardware and what's your you know,
4:44
what a kind of common, common kind of incidence that your technology presents and
4:49
can get him a way of your productivity day to day. Yeah, all
4:55
right, well I'm putting my my hat of hat of ignorance on today tom
5:00
this topic. But yeah, you know, I was. I was thinking
5:03
about this both as I looked at kind of some of those deck sub articles
5:06
and also some of the content that our product marketing team has put together around
5:11
device health and hardware refresh and it really got me thinking not only about the
5:16
work setting, but just the number of devices I've had throughout my life,
5:21
just like everybody else, you know, I've had different phones, different laptops,
5:28
and I was just thinking back to all those times where I've had a
5:30
device for two three years and all of a sudden, a laptop becomes too
5:36
slow to even use, or a phone's battery life starts draining way faster than
5:42
it used to, things that I either just accepted as well, that's the
5:46
way it goes. Once you've had a piece of technology for a couple of
5:49
years, you know, the battery craps out, or or maybe you know,
5:54
maybe I downloaded too much rap music on my laptop in middle school and
5:59
and it made it made the laptop start start acting slow on me. But
6:03
I never really knew why these things were happening. And one thing I definitely
6:08
never did was consider what I could do as the user of the technology to
6:13
maybe delay the kind of the health of my devices declining or completely resolve these
6:21
problems so that they lasted way longer than they would have originally. So thinking
6:26
about that kind of got me really interested in getting the other side, the
6:32
the its perspective, who are kind of actively thinking about how to prolong the
6:38
life of devices and know a lot more than we do about why these problems
6:43
actually occur and what can be done to delay or solve them completely. So
6:47
that's kind of what had me bringing this topic to the table today. It's
6:53
a great setup, and I do actually like the observation. There's always like
6:57
a period in the sort of the last phrase of your final laptop where you're
7:00
just kind of like transferring the device between charges. You like I'm pluggetting you
7:06
always have to run to the next one before it before it completely bottoms out.
7:11
Yeah, I know, well, okay, before we before we turn
7:13
to our resident it team in the guise of Oriana um Megan, where did
7:20
your level of sophistication fall between turn it off and on again and quickly and
7:28
quickly self service and improve your devices? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I'm
7:36
kind of ashamed to say I don't think I was a very good user of
7:41
hardware. Um. It doesn't help that the first couple jobs I had,
7:45
we didn't have it. I was, I was doing the kind of you
7:47
know, the hippie thing. Um, so I was working at very small
7:50
places where there really wasn't it. But I also, what was I going
7:56
to say that I have that I'm solidly a millennial. So I had that
8:01
funny thing growing up where I basically was it for my family. You know,
8:05
my mom and dad would be like, the computer's not working, you
8:07
fix it. Because I was just the only one who knew how to turn
8:11
it on or you know, whatever had gone wrong. I could figure it
8:15
out. So I kind of came of age with this idea that I was
8:18
actually quite good with technology. I learned HTML so that I could you know,
8:22
code my live journal to have a glittery background. And then I you
8:28
know, got my first real job with it, and the first time that
8:31
they had to tell me to turn it off and turn it on again and
8:35
that fixed the problem. I was like, Okay, yep, I had
8:39
to be told. I had to be told because I didn't. It didn't
8:43
occur to me that like machines need to be shut down and turn it back
8:46
on again, So you know, I would put myself squarely in the I'm
8:50
actually an idiot box, but I just didn't know that I was. But
8:54
it was only when I started working here and I started actually trying to market
8:58
to an it audience that I really understood or really like thought about for the
9:05
first time the challenge of managing not just one device or one phone, but
9:11
managing devices at scale. Like I had never really thought about having a hardware
9:16
refresh policy right, and of course companies have that, but it just I'd
9:20
never had to worry about it before. There's always been someone who gave me
9:24
a computer and then told me when I was getting a new one. So
9:28
that when I started working here and I started thinking about, like, wow,
9:31
it must be so complex to have to manage device management, hardware management
9:35
at scale, and then also have to manage like all of us who need
9:39
to be told to turn it off and turn it out again and then when
9:43
you throw it, Yeah, like remote work, I'll say, working remote,
9:46
I'm way less likely to go to it, way less. I'm way
9:50
more likely now that I know to turn it off and turn it on again,
9:52
to just do that six times and hope that it fixes it. Because
9:56
Yeah, when I'm in person, I might go walk over to the it
10:00
who I know because we work together and we know each other by name,
10:03
in my face and say like, hey, this is going on, can
10:05
you help me? Whereas when it's remote and I have to file a ticket
10:09
and they might email me and they're going to need a schedule time to have
10:11
a meeting, and like, my schedule's already pretty full. I don't want
10:15
another half hour block on my calendar. I'm way less likely to call them.
10:20
I'm way more likely to be like, you know what, it's it's
10:22
probably fine, and that's probably not good for the device on the long term,
10:26
but I don't know that, so I just live with it. And
10:31
a couple of things I want to pick up there, Megan before before we
10:33
go to a knock on the door of Orion's tech cafe. First of all,
10:41
I never know, because you know, in the UK we have this
10:43
very very famous soap soap up a sickcomrad called it crowd and it's very funny.
10:50
It's very pleasant, and it's about twenty twenty thirty years old, but
10:52
it still gets watched. And what the great kind of recurring joke in it
10:56
is whenever anyone phones up his basement with the IT workers in it, the
11:01
first thing they always say, if you tried turning it on and off again?
11:03
And so it kind of became like if you will a meme even before
11:07
almost there were memes, I think, or around the same time that the
11:09
meme was being born. So nobody doesn't know that you turn it off and
11:13
on again, but I don't. I sometimes talk to Americans who know the
11:16
IT crowds, sometimes don't. And this is more from my own curiosity.
11:20
Megan, have you have you never seen the show? I've never seen it.
11:24
I've definitely heard the title. But now and when he did say,
11:26
like, have you turned it off and on again? I was like,
11:28
oh, yeah, that's the thing you have to deal But it just hadn't.
11:33
It hadn't occurred to me that I think we've all failed to turn it
11:37
off and on again once in our life, at least to be fair.
11:39
Yeah, I understand it and the other thing I was going to pick up
11:43
Megan is obviously thinking about hardware. One of the things kind of next thing
11:50
maybe maybe primes your awareness of, is that there are other dimensions to hardware
11:56
use, hardware, wear and test, specifically environmental ones. And when you
12:01
think about how a lot of materials that go into our laptops and things are
12:07
sourced kind of global social ones, right, And I assume this is something
12:11
that you would be conscientious of. So is that is that something that sort
12:16
of you became aware of as well simultaneously And how does that influence your your
12:20
I behavior? No, quite so, I definitely was already aware of that.
12:24
I'm a very big in my own personal life and my personal use of
12:28
technology. I like, make it last as long as you can. Like
12:31
my last cell phone that I had, I think was like eight years old,
12:35
and I only got rid of it because I accidentally left it in an
12:37
uber on the way to the airport, so it was just gone. I
12:41
wouldn't have gotten a new phone, yet I was perfectly content to use this
12:45
phone that. Yeah, I had to charge it every night and it might
12:48
not make it through the day, But I like, why do I need
12:50
a new piece of technology. This one works fine, and I'm very aware
12:54
of, like, yeah, the environmental impact, especially of mining for the
12:58
materials that are technology needs. I won't totally get on my soapbox, but
13:03
it's horrible, so I do try. Yeah, I do try to from
13:07
my own, Like I think my laptop is like ten years old at this
13:11
point. I don't. I just yeah, I keep technology for as long
13:13
as I can. I'm I'm not a person who needs the newest thing.
13:16
But that was another thing, like reading some of the content that we had
13:20
made here about the environmental sustainability of hardware at the in the corporate setting,
13:26
you know, it becomes complicated, right because you have compliance and security issues
13:30
that factor in, Like there are other factors at play that I probably don't
13:35
think about with my personal laptop in terms of why you know, a company
13:39
can't keep their laptops for ten years. So yeah, that was that was
13:43
kind of an interesting lens to sort of grapple with, like how can companies
13:48
make their hardware policy more environmentally sustainable without you know, having all these other
13:54
knock on effects. Totally totally, And I think it's interesting because I feel
13:58
like you could even be a relatively conscientious user of technology or just a sort
14:05
of you know, aware person in most kind of areas in general, and
14:07
still maybe when it came to your your work device, just almost think well,
14:13
this is just an outsourced to the company. You know, this is
14:16
this is this isn't where I think of it in terms of my personal responsibility
14:18
or my personal impact. I think that would have I think that would have
14:22
been more common just a few years ago. And now you see that kind
14:26
of meeting of the corporate and the personal in this area. And I do
14:31
see that as kind of changing attitudes on both sides of the divide, you
14:37
know, if you if if if you know what I mean. Yeah,
14:41
I think that makes sense. I think probably a few years ago people would
14:43
have wanted the newest, shiniest toy at work status symbol too. Yeah,
14:50
ye, but yeah, I do think that at least I maybe I hang
14:54
out with the wrong crowd, but everyone I know cares more about the environmental
14:56
sustainability of their workplace. You have an nice crowd, that's great. Um
15:01
No, look so here we are Oriana, We're we're We're back. I
15:05
don't know if we're banging at the door of a of a sophisticated twenty twenty
15:09
three tech cafe or a sort of twenty eighteen it office up on the six
15:16
and a half floor. But we're carrying armfuls of of busted fast battery draining
15:22
devices. Um, We're we're in complete, We're completely bewildered. We some
15:28
of us have turned them off and on again. Some of us haven't even
15:31
done that. Um, and you're you're our only point of hope for and
15:35
help. So what what can you advise us? Sorry? And what are
15:37
your reflections on this topic? Well, definitely can't presume to speak for um
15:45
all of it, but I definitely um am somewhere in between. So I
15:50
come from yeah, yeah, but also my like Megan was saying, I
15:56
thought it was really interesting. She was saying, you know, the sort
15:58
of millennial experience of being tech support for our family. It was very different
16:02
from me. So I come from a family that is both hippies but also
16:06
very much techie people. So I share that perspective of trying to make technology
16:14
last. But in my case that would mean something like I have a gaming
16:18
laptop that I have been maintaining really carefully for many years now actually, and
16:22
so it still works really well. It's still up to date. And one
16:26
of the great things about hardware versus software is that when it comes to things
16:30
like security compliance, that's something that you are generally doing via software. So
16:36
as long as your hardware can run your software, you can in fact be
16:41
compliant and have the most up to date software. The question is really what
16:45
do you need in order to make sure that your hardware supports that software?
16:49
Right? And that's I think one of the places where we do get to
16:53
the sort of slightly more complicated perspective of well what does that mean? Right,
16:59
So computers, it might mean you can update a part of the computer
17:03
without having to replace the whole thing. It's going to Megan's comment about what
17:08
is so environmentally costly about computers. One of the most costly things is the
17:14
battery, right, So we have a few different solutions here. Instead of
17:18
replacing an entire computer, we can replace one part to refresh that computer.
17:25
So refurbished computers, for example, are an awesome option for personal consumers.
17:30
But also companies have their inventory that they're maintaining. They don't need to just
17:34
completely described machines, right. They can take machines back, they can use
17:38
the parts that work really well, and I think a large IT group has
17:44
the capacity to do that, and that's what they're doing, right, But
17:45
there are a lot of challenges to that, like inventory maintenance, things like
17:49
that. So giving an IT teams the tools to do that is one part
17:56
of the big picture. Then the other part is what do we do to
18:00
make our stuff last? So one of the things that I do is I
18:06
use the sort of optimal settings to extend the battery life on things like my
18:10
phone computer. So my phone actually never charges two one hundred percent, but
18:14
it also isn't going to die before the end of the day for several years
18:18
longer because of that. So that's something that I, as an end consumer
18:22
can do. An IT team can use education and information to try and help
18:30
people learn about these different techniques, and that's one of the things that I
18:34
think is really exciting. IT. Next thing is that we're trying to give
18:37
IT teams tools that aren't usually in their toolbox. Right. Usually we're thinking
18:44
software, we're thinking hardware, We're not really thinking about things like behavioral change.
18:48
How do we help people build in good habits that are good for people
18:52
and good for technology, like turning your computer off at the end of the
18:55
day. Right, that's good for you because you're not like, oh well,
18:57
maybe I'll just check my email again after dinner and before bed. And
19:02
also it's good for your computer. It'll make it last longer if you're not
19:06
leaving it on all the time, as we mentioned earlier. So I do
19:08
think that there's so many great little approaches to this, and obviously, as
19:15
the sort of tech psychologist, my thought is, how do we help people
19:19
make this an easier lift and make this a mutual win. I think the
19:23
wind is more obviously maybe on the consumer side, where you can not be
19:27
buying a thousand dollar phone every two years, but on the company side itself.
19:34
So how do we make sure that we are promoting good tech policies from
19:40
making sure that our software is up to date to also thinking about things like
19:45
planned obsolations, which is my least favorite thing, right that's when technology is
19:49
designed to not last for more than a few years. And I'd be fascinated
19:56
to know what your reflections are on on specifically how you what should be the
20:03
guiding principles of a way of engaging people in these kinds of issues In terms
20:08
of being more conscientious users of technology in such a way that that isn't going
20:15
to alienate them, that isn't going to push them away, but it is
20:18
going to make them feel. Part of it is, you know, where
20:21
do you drove a line in terms of engaging people in this way, but
20:25
particularly if you're a company and an employer, right where it's not really a
20:29
natural role to play in terms of encouraging somebody in this kind of direction or
20:33
in this kind of context at least totally. And that's such a great question
20:37
and actually one of my favorite ones. Okay, so one of my absolute
20:41
biggest soapboxes to far. The term is people often default to shame to try
20:52
and promote behavioral change, even though every single piece of research ever shows that
20:56
that is the worst way to promote behavioral change, whether it's quitting smoking or
21:03
switching your battery to not charge one hundred percent. If you make people feel
21:07
bad about something, you're just promoting disengagement, right Like, if something makes
21:12
you feel shatty, you're not going to want to engage and learn more and
21:18
take actions. Right. So the thing, and I think number one rule
21:22
is do not shame people, especially because a lot of us, like we're
21:26
talking about don't necessarily know this stuff, right, It's not obvious, it's
21:30
not at the front of our minds. So I think the first thing we
21:33
do when we're trying to educate people is come from a place of why is
21:38
this mutually beneficial? You know, what are people excited about? How do
21:42
we get people invested? Some of it is tapping into the fact that people
21:48
are already invested in things like having a good experience or wanting to take care
21:52
of the environment, and that is something that a lot of people care about.
21:59
So I think, yeah, really focusing on the positives the benefits,
22:03
those are things that I definitely recommend and that we want to try and build
22:07
into these things. The other is, of course empowerment. So let's remove
22:12
the barriers. Let's make it as easy as possible. That's definitely one of
22:15
the things that we next think one to do is provide these tools that make
22:21
it completely automatic. So ant in policy versus an opt out policy would be
22:26
something. Okay, So say we have an opt in policy, and an
22:30
opt in policy is I have to request to keep my laptop for four years
22:36
instead of three years, or I have to select the battery saver mode.
22:41
An opt out policy is my company will not replace my laptop until I let
22:45
them know that I'm having issues, and then we'll try and fix it for
22:48
me first before just giving me a new machine. Or I will have my
22:52
computer by default set up to save battery and I can choose to turn it
22:56
off if I need to, because for example, I'm doing presentation or something
23:00
where I need more power, or I'm doing something else where I need to
23:04
turn that setting off. Yep, yep, very very well put and lots
23:11
of fascinating. In fact, I are I think you Sam, You're you're
23:14
the editor in chief of a deck Stop thinking? Is that there's an article
23:18
in that in these principles, don't you think absolutely we should come in Arina?
23:25
You can you write something for us that would be great? Um?
23:27
In fact, you know, Sam, any any last thoughts on this.
23:30
You've raised the topic, had some some good insights there. Um we can
23:34
take forward is technology users or in terms of our conclusions to the top,
23:41
Yeah, yeah, No. I think the thing that stands out to me
23:45
most about what Oriona said and what I think is most important is the delineation.
23:48
Um. When it comes to kind of it problem solving between um solving
23:55
problems in the moment. You know, I have this problem with my laptop,
23:59
I need to go to it, and kind of fostering good it habits
24:03
as users. I think those are two very different things, and I think
24:07
sometimes we can over emphasize the fixing of problems in the moment that are directly
24:15
impacting our productivity. Right now, you know this app won't work, I
24:18
can't access this network. But really the kind of building of habits is the
24:26
thing that is both more important to kind of the long term health of our
24:32
technology and also kind of a little bit trickier to remember as users when we're
24:37
just kind of going about our days. Kind of having that checklist of good
24:41
it habits something that we're all kind of consistently working on improving, I think
24:48
we'll make things easier for both the users and IT in the long run.
24:52
So I think that was a great point and kind of the most important one
24:56
that stood out to me well said, and I think include in the show
25:00
notes are linked to a few pieces of the dextopause featured recently, including a
25:04
tech cafe when we mentioned so that people can go and read more around this
25:10
topic. But listen, it was a superb performance Bybis Gatheret and crew.
25:14
Today. Really really enjoyed hearing everybody's thoughts on this topic. Actually, isn't
25:18
it made me think a little differently today. I have to say, you
25:22
know, I'm going to try and be a bit more conscientious going forwards.
25:25
And it was lovely to speak to you all. So sorry, honest Megan,
25:29
see you soon. To make sure that you never miss an episode,
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