I keep wondering when things will return to normal. Pre-covid normal, that is. I yearn for more. So much more. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I long to experience the incessant hawking in a trade show or feel the hustle and bustle in an ed-tech conference. I hunger to caress the sights, sounds, and tastes of traveling to different cities once again. No more virtual for me, thank you very much.
Basta ya!Except for my daughter, who is a front-line essential medical worker, the quarantine has been relatively gentle on me and the rest of my family, all things considered. Interestingly, my kids and I all work in display-intensive fields, which has certainly turned out to be beneficial, from an employment stability perspective. For example, I still teach at the university, but I now teach entirely online.
My oldest son leads a sales team for a large multinational corporation. He has worked remotely several days a week for the year prior to Covid, so the push online was an easier transition for him; his wife has always worked remote only. My youngest son is a gifted 3D animator, and his company simply shifted their entire operation to remote work, even though it had never been considered before Covid. No such luck for my medically-invested daughter, but she still has occasion to work from home, once in a great while.
Employers are making plans for re-entry, though. Our university has tentative plans to ramp up on-campus courses in winter semester, virus permitting. My oldest son’s firm is starting to rough out initial plans for periodic face-to-face meetings. A return to business travel is also very much in the offing. My youngest son’s company will soon return to their offices once a week, when conditions dictate, of course. But in all these cases, these organizations are taking a hard look at the need for large physical buildings or offices. In fact, most are downsizing their permanent real estate footprint.
Still, as folks return to ‘normal’, there are some intelligent ways to go about it. Employers owe it to their people to do this smartly. That’s where displays can really help. Medical-style dashboards, like those my daughter is accustomed to working with, can help lead the way. Take for example the live-data Covid-19 Dashboard now being deployed by the University of Colorado-Denver. This dashboard (pictured below) helps puts students and faculty returning to campus at ease:
The dashboard is linked to scientifically based, live caution metrics, and uses a stoplight metaphor (green = go with confidence, yellow = watching, red = concerning) and screen color coding to communicate levels of anticipated safety. Linked here and shown below are the actual caution metrics:
Building dashboards like this is not a bad idea, even for companies like my kids work for. And perhaps this makes sense for your company, too. That has always been a strength of displays: they help us visualize and understand any situation—and support us in making better decisions. Building confidence in a safe return is a good thing. As for me, I’m taking some slow steps forward. Today I am headed to a movie theater for the first time since February to see an independent film, subtitled in English from the original Chinese. The safety, distancing, and cleaning protocols at my local theater appear well thought out. So I feel safe. Basta ya! — Len Scrogan
