Monday Morning – Terrific Daily-Use Mode Example

What do you do when you start your business day on Monday morning?

In Great Demo! Workshops, I often introduce the idea of “Daily-Use Mode” vs. “Set-up Mode” – where Daily-Use Mode is what most users do frequently in their day-to-day work and Set-Up Mode is what people (administrators, in many cases) do once or rarely. 

An example of Set-Up Mode is creating a dashboard or report – something that is typically done only once for that specific dashboard or report.  Daily-Use Mode is when users consume the previously-created dashboard or report in their day-to-day work – which might happen daily, weekly, monthly or other cadence.

Sadly, many traditional demos squander far too much time (and audience attention) in Set-Up Mode showing how to build these dashboards and reports, versus showing how these deliverables can be easily consumed.  A terrific way to think about Daily-Use Mode is to contemplate “Monday morning”. 

What do most people do when they arrive at their desks on Monday morning?  They check email.  (Yes, and some browse their favorites/bookmarked websites – and then they check email…!) 

So, consider starting the Daily-Use Mode portion of your demos in email, if possible.  For example, start by saying, “it’s Monday morning and you’ve just arrived in your office…”  You then show an “unopened” message, open it to reveal a link, then click the link to launch a browser that takes the user to the dashboard or report.  The user then consumes the dashboard or report, looking for problems, trends, or opportunities in accord with what your software enables. 

That’s the way most people start their day – why not map to it? 

For Great Demo! practitioners, the above pathway of starting in email and proceeding to the dashboard or report is a truly terrific “Do It” pathway, leading crisply back to a compelling Illustration.  Delightful!