Oz Analytics

How We Spend Our Day

The New York Times has just published an interesting analysis of the latest American Time Use Survey. This survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of their day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008:

This interactive graphic has been created by Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, Kevin Quealy and Amy Schoenfeld using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Click on the image for a larger version or visit the original here.

It is a fascinating glimpse into how we all spend our time and worth 5 minutes of your day to explore.

From what I can see, the US population, on average, spends at most only 14 minutes online outside of their work (6 minutes gaming [12 percent of their time spent on 'Other leisure'] and 8 minutes using the computer). How can this be? The figure for work is only 3 hours and 25 minutes - reflecting the number of people without 'official' jobs.

I can only conclude that the way I spend my time is absolutely out of whack as I spend a couple of hours on the computer outside of work. I think maybe I need to get a life. Does anyone have the contact number for CAOA (Computer Addicts Of Australia)?

Do You Know What Your Analytic Portal Is Up To?

I've spent a good part of the last few years delivering analytic portals of one sort or another and largely they have been successful. I'm confident, at a minimum, that they have delivered their owners a solid return on their investment - but is that enough? Could we have done better?

Why am I wondering about this now? Well the question arrived by a rather circuitous route but - bare with me - I think it's worth it.

Earlier this week I was listening to a talk by Ian Bogost from X-Media Lab and an Associate Professor at The Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. The talk was called 'Serious Gaming' and I was interested to think again about how some games are surprisingly effective in a wide range of areas - not just my teenage boys blasting away on the Battlefield game.

You can view the speech here:

I started to think about what I knew (rather than hoped) about how 'my' portals were currently being used. Had it gone to plan? Were people finding novel ways of getting their information from the portal? Or worse - was the portal irrelevant and had fallen into disuse?

I regularly hear bits and pieces about past portals I developed so I am pretty confident that the latter is not the case. Equally I still worry about the full potential of the portal not being achieved. And that is where the 'Serious Gaming' talk re-enters this story.

What I took away from this talk was that games could effectively teach someone new skills and embed these learnings in their everyday life.

This is what I want to achieve with my analytic portals. It can and has been done but changing the way people use information (or getting them to use a BI tool at all) takes an enormous amount of time in my experience - often at the expense of further development work by the BI team. I think that this is an inefficient use of your BI analysts - and often it is not something they are very good at.

Is there a better way?

Well games may very well be an option. To take another example, the military spends huge amounts training their personnel in massive simulation games. Here is good article on business gaming if you want more detail. Why can't this be adapted and used in commercial or Government organisations? Would scenario-based BI training or role playing add value to the standard training sessions in your 'how to use the portal' workshops?

A big hurdle to overcome will be creating a simulation that is realistic and compelling for the participants. Just like agreeing business requirements, the BI department can't do this without the cooperation and participation of end users and subject matter experts.

So it is not easy to achieve but aren't the rewards the difference between success and blowing everyone away?