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I vividly remember when Microsoft launched Windows 95. Designed to really look like a desktop, with icons for the Recycle Bin, Briefcase, Inbox and other functions, it seemed revolutionary, a boon for productivity as well as operations and logistics, and above all, easy to use. And that innovation was market-proven: Microsoft product designer at the time, Juliette Weiss, noted in a 2017 article for Medium: “It was the most user-tested product ever.” [the company’s] history.”
Back then, it made sense to treat your computer workspace much like your home or office desktop, cleaning and organizing it regularly just as you would your physical fax machine. But today, with cloud computing and an infinite number of automated tools and apps, the analogy between digital and physical workspace doesn’t quite hold up. Organizing the 21st century ecosystem is not just a matter of implementing an intelligent storage system, but of choosing the right tools and building intuitive systems, and then continually refining and updating them. Harvard Business Review He summed it up well in an article published more than a decade ago: “Our job today and tomorrow,” it read in part, “is not to organize ourselves better; it is to get the right technologies that meet our personal productivity needs.”
At Jotform, my team and I rely on a multitude of tools and platforms for personal work and collaboration, and simplifying them has helped us reduce friction, increase production, and grow and scale without a dime of external funding.