Technological White Space: Where to Use (and Not Use) Technology

I recently posted on my parenting blog, Caution! May Contain Small Parts, on what I called Technological White Space.

The idea is that, like content on a page, technology is best used (and not used) strategically to give users a more focused experience.

Technological White Space would be the areas where we strategically eliminate or coordinate the use of technology to prevent that feeling of technological overload even the most tech savvy get, which is akin to reading a dense, content-heavy Web page.

To add some much-needed white space, we could:

• find the best tech tool for the job and use it consistently.
• don't use a tools for the sake of using them; it's like filling a Web page with meaningless filler items.
  
• coordinate our uses of technology across departments and throughout the university, rather than choosing to reinvent the wheel by using our own separate tools that overwhelm users.
• reduce the instances of a particular technology if you want to force separate users of those instances to collaborate/coordinate.