March 2007 www.thecolumn.eu.com The Column Zosimus Behind the Times? Would separation science be more progressive if chromatography companies used designers from the consumer goods sector? asks Zosimus. In an attempt to broaden my understanding of life outside chromatography I attended the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas and the MacWorld conference in San Francisco before attending Pittcon in Chicago. The keynote lecture by Steve Jobs at MacWorld on the introduction of the iPhone made me realize how primitive chromatographic hardware and software is compared with consumer products. When I walked the long rows at Pittcon I became convinced that the whole sector of analytical science is way behind the times when it comes to instrument design and software. In his keynote lecture Steve displayed a graph of smart versus easy-to-use for existing mobile telephones and the so-called “smart phones”. A copy of this graph is shown in Figure 1 Figure 1: Steve Job’s smart versus easy-to-use graph for his new smartphone. Smart and it illustrates how he perceives the new hardware and software of the iPhone to be in a totally new area. So when touring the booths and studying the instruments on show at Pittcon I started to make my own smart versus easy-to-use graphs. The controls on all the instruments brought the image presented at MacWorld of a non-Mac smart phone to mind. This is the type of phone that would be designed by a scientist and I think the level of design we have for both hardware and software in analytical science also falls into this category. I looked at various user interfaces and options available for laboratory information management software (LIMS). None of the software on show was (to me) intuitive. All the interfaces were based on one pull-down menu after another. They were all difficult to use and navigate around. In fact, at Figure 2: Smart versus easy-to-use graph for chromatography software. Smart iPhone Hard to use Smart phones Easy to use Hard to use Easy to use Chromatography software Cell phones Not Smart Not Smart Author: Zosimus E-mail: zosimus@thecolumn.eu.com 9
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Column - March 2007