The guys at Panic have released details of the status board they built for their office. It’s a web page that displays the following information - frequently updated using AJAX.
- E-Mail Queue — number of messages / number of days.
- Project Status
- Important Countdowns
- Revenue.
- Live Tri-Met Bus Arrivals — when it’s time to go home!
- The Panic Calendar.
- Employee Twitter Messages.
- Any @Panic Twitter Messages.
Something interesting from their blog post.
Les, one of our support guys, said it best after a week: “That board is like magic.” Our support turnaround time is faster than it’s ever been. Just the simple act of “publicizing” those numbers — not in a cruel way, but a “where are we at as a group?” way — has kept the support process on-task and, I think, made it a bit more like a video game. (It helps that when all the boxes are at “zero”, a virtual bottle of champagne appears on-screen, and a physical one is likely removed from the fridge.)
Great stuff. Imagine if something like this was to be done at scale on urban screens.
