To PDF or Not PDF, Part 2
I gave a presentation in which the question of a "paperless" laboratory came up. "I'm waiting for the older people in my lab to retire," a twenty-something man confessed. Us geezers don't cotton to them new fangled punch card thingamabobs, apparently.
After putting policies and procedures online in Portable Document Format (PDF)--a "perfect" solution that our hospital administration endorses--no one used them. Was age the cause? Are we too fossilized to be flexible in cyberspace?
Let's consider that. Laboratory workers are used to constant change, fluid multitasking and intensive computer access, from analyzer workstations to information systems. We are pressed for time, space and people. The last thing we need is more work. And that includes how we read policies and procedures.
Age? There has to be a better reason.
To begin with, manuals are often within reach, like a cookbook. Pages are printed two-sided or kept in sheet protectors to view two at once. Savvy writers begin a lengthy procedure on an even-numbered page. So it's convenient.
But there are other reasons for the persistence of paper. The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press) describes paper's "affordances"--the activities that an object allows because of its physical properties. Paper, as it turns out, is pretty handy. It can be grasped, folded, carried--it is truly portable--and can be written on. As a static device--information stored on it doesn't interact with the user--paper is hard to beat.
For bench techs to prefer paper, these affordances are valuable. They know the information online is less likely to be corrupted, but it simply isn't as easy to use. Standing at the hood in micro halfway through a C. diff toxin assay is not the time to go to a terminal on the other side of the room. It's better to have the procedure manual open, sitting right beside you.
Next, I'll consider what's really wrong with a PDF.