Even if the vast majority of tech solutions are designed to make human lives easier, there’s no guarantee they’ll be seen that way.

Concerns about the potential impact of new technologies are not unfounded, especially when people fear that technology could replace something essential and cherished about their work.

For us at Capacity, those concerns are really important – actually, they've informed our product's development from the get-go.

So we set up a brief thought experiment – first published on our LinkedIn page – as a gateway to talking about our relationship with technology. We'd like to share it here too.

So: what do you see?

Are the ducks being gently helped into place by technology?

Or are they being forced into narrow conformity by a machine?

Would you change your mind if the yellow was replaced with grey?

How about if the floor was made of lava?

This short video of the ducks on the belts was clearly made to make us happy, not uncomfortable.

Yet small changes to how it looks, or how we're primed to receive it, can alter our perceptions – and when building a technology product, those perceptions matter.

Empowering the human

At Capacity, we build work allocation technology for law firms.

We combine data science, neuroscience, and advanced algorithmic processing to make it easy to locate the best-fit lawyer for any legal matter or task. Capacity now cuts the search for the ideal candidate from hours or days to minutes or seconds.

But we recognise that those efficiency savings don't mean anything if they're perceived to be at the expense of your people.

On the one hand, advanced algorithms are superhuman – collecting and processing data in a way people simply cannot.

On the other hand, what if the technology is inhuman – taking resourcing out of people’s hands entirely?

We really care about that second concern. We don’t want Capacity to reduce human interactions, but to enrich them. We don't want to replace people in their jobs, but to empower them to deliver even more value.

For that reason, Capacity only automates assignments when the work allocator specifically selects that they want our algorithm to do it for them.

Otherwise, the final decision is theirs; it's just that the most laborious part of their job – analysing availability and skills spreadsheets – is taken off their shoulders by Capacity.

They input the profile of lawyers they're looking for, and Capacity does the heavy lifting to return a ranked list of candidates for them to choose from. Simple as that.

The human-computer balance

Resource managers who use Capacity report that it’s saved 40-50% of their time, which they’re now investing in one-to-one conversations, in pastoral care, and in strategic planning.

In other words, Capacity is a huge, human asset for them – helping them refocus their energy on what really matters: the talent they nurture.

We know that our clients don't want to replace a conversation with a keystroke. We were lawyers once too, and we know how impactful a brief conversation can be – even if just to check how we were getting on.

We’re here to make those conversations much more rewarding – letting tech handle the things it’s really good at, while empowering people to apply much more of the all-important human touch.

Chess computers

In our piece comparing Capacity to chess computers, we talked about fears that the game of chess could not survive a computer beating a reigning World Chess Champion. That happened back in 1997, when Deep Blue defeated GM Garry Kasparov.

Thirty-seven years on, humans are working with computers to explore the deeper mysteries of chess. Meanwhile, over-the-board, human-to-human chess has never been more popular and accessible.

We want to be the chess computer of law firm work allocation – helping your people make better, more competitive, more creative staffing decisions that strike exactly the right balance between computer wizardry and the nuance that only humans can bring to the job.