This is a fun ideas post around software, workflow and efficiency. The other day I was thinking more about dashboards and portals. What happened to the portals? They are popular in Asia. And now chat apps in Asia are almost the new portal. This makes a ton of sense. You don’t have to visit 10 different apps to message a friend, order a pizza, call uber, make a haircut appointment, etc. It’s all done through one app, simple and neat.

I was thinking about why there aren’t more dashboards or portals in the US. Is your phone one big portal? It has a ton of apps that allow you to access what you need. It kind of is. But none of the apps are connected, which is silly. When I make a haircut appointment why isn’t that automatically booked in my calendar?

A dashboard or portal could also be useful at home. My normal workflow at home is not to be on the phone all the time. Is that strange? For my home dashboard, I would envision a 40 inch touch screen in the kitchen that is shared by all of the family members. It would of course sync with our apps on our phones too.

That would suggest the operating system should be Android or iOS. The large home dashboard would be similar to your phone. And maybe the main difference is the visual component of the workflow, how you interact with it. Seems simple but different visuals and workflow can have a dramatic effect on people’s lives and how they interact with software and mobile apps.

What would be on this dashboard?

You can probably imagine what would be there, nothing earth shattering. I would want a family calendar that’s tied into all of our calendars, email, weather, social accounts, location of our cars, messaging apps, what else? It should be the go to place so a family can coordinate schedules and has a clue of what’s going-on with everyone in the family.

Is this really needed?

I’m not sure to be honest. I think it would be helpful, but not sure of the demand. And will technology like the Hololens replace the need for a home dashboard? I can’t imagine walking around all day with wearing it though. Over time those imagines will become smaller. I wear glasses all day so if the Hololens shrunk to normal eye glasses size, we would walk around like the bionic man and that will be awesome.

Back to the topic, it would also be helpful to connect into a voice recognition system like the Amazon Echo. Often I’d like to add an event to a calendar, like the family calendar, but I’m not near my phone or a computer. Or I am near one but too lazy to enter it. I just want to say “Hey, enter this calendar invite”.

This is why the workflow and understanding how people would actually use this dashboard is so important. The technology implementation would not be complex. The workflow would be crucial. The design would also be important.