When is personalization of technology going too far?  |  May 21, 2008  

I received a TomTom GPS device last year and finally spent the weekend playing with it. Like many devices, I could change the startup display to show family members... My wife was happy with that.

When I customized the voice for the device to have my voice instead of one of the canned ones that was too much! She said it felt too much like "big brother". I was being a backseat driver, without even being in the car. Commands like "turn right in 500 yards" and other directions felt more like incessant nagging than help when delivered in the voice of a "loved one".

When organizations look at using opportunistic computing, they need to understand the amount of "help" the organization is willing to stand before they turn it off. It may not even be the amount, but the method (like it was in this case) that needs to be tuned. Just because you can do something, it does not mean you should do it.

Charlie Bess
EDS' Next Big Thing Blog