Artifact (experience): Challenges from reliance on technical tools instead of leveraging people

How is technology affecting the ways things are done in 2024?  A simple example.

Here is a quick story of how challenging the shift to using technology is becoming harder than it needs to be, even for those who are tech-literate.

My friend is going through an onboarding process with a new employer.  As part of the process he has to provide documentation of his diploma for his education.  He is 42 years old.

He went to the local community college in person to see if he could get a copy of his diploma and all they said they could do was provide him a copy of his transcripts.  They sent him away telling him he needed to order the diploma online and that was all the help he received. He wasn’t even guided to the right place online to request the document, no instructions at all.

He had to search for the website, request the copy, pay a fee, then wait to receive it.  Then he received it and had to download it to send it to his next employer.  In the interim he had to download an app, try to log into an existing account that he couldn’t remember the password, and go through the verification process that he wasn’t a robot multiple times.  He kept getting the message that the password was incorrect and had to try again.

The reason he tried to go in person was because the website directed him to the office and stated that he could do it in person, yet somewhere and at some point in the past, the policy changed, and he couldn’t actually do what he was told to do via the advertised and posted instructions.  It wasted his time as he could have requested it days earlier.  It caused frustration. He was trying to do it with his phone while traveling as he had other plans and was juggling both things at once.  When he received the diploma, he then tried to send it to the new employer only to discover there was no attachment and he was in a limited service area that only had localized internet capability.  He had to try again downloading the file to somewhere on his phone so it could be attached properly to the email.  

This would be a challenge for me as I don’t know the full capability and how to do administrative functions on my phone that I normally would do on my laptop.

At one point he even had to borrow another person’s phone to make a phone call to get it straightened out because his phone provider didn’t have adequate coverage to communicate in the area that he was physically located at the time.  The call was dropped or wouldn’t even connect.

As much as technology is trying to automate things, this is clearly an example in which it slowed the process down and became a challenge to accomplishing the task at hand.  He is a person who jumps through the hoops to get things done, but this isn’t efficient or even easy for him or anyone else who is facing technical disadvantages.

There has to be a way to bridge the gap so that people are not left behind.