Week 9. Opposite examples of HCI

 

An example of bad design

Many inventions were meant to make our lives easier however not all of them succeeded in that because of bad ergonomics and interaction with the user. The same happens in IT where interaction between the user and the machine plays a major part. Some developers do not pay much attention to the design of their finished product or make it sophisticated intentionally which may bring the user experience to a disaster. One such example is the booking system of Irish low-cost airline Ryanair. 

 

Ryanair booking page

 

 

While booking, the user faces a drop-down menu with lots of important options hidden from his sight. Because of that if he would not check all the options, some extra costs will be applied. A bad user experience in such important cases as the booking is inapplicable because it requires planning of a trip and money spending what people find stressful and bad design makes the user experience even worse. I suppose the only reason why people are still using the services of this company is because of extremely low flight costs, otherwise, the bad user design would spoil the whole business for that company. 

Another bad example of the design is the Aliexpress search bar and its large variety of options. In that case, the options are not hidden in additional menus but their abundance worsens the user experience. Also, each product has additional specifications which often cannot be understood by trivial users.  Aliexpress website often presents too much useless information for the user and the important one gets lost. 

 

 Aliexpress laptop description.

 

However, a good example of search page design is Google. For many years Google tried to make its search engine extremely ergonomic, fast and understandable for any user with any experience. It does not offer search settings first place as many other searches do but tries to rely on its own algorithms which determine the most relevant answers to user's search queries. Because of that, the major part of users gets satisfied with the result in about 10 seconds.

 

 Google Advanced search

 

 For the more deep and specific search users always may try the more detailed search provided by Google, which also has a good design and it is easy to understand. In my opinion a good design and accessibility is the reason why Google is still the most popular search engine. Google Chrome web browser is also based on good user design combined with a fast and reliable application what makes it the most popular web browser amongst others.

 

 

 

 Sources:

Oleg B. (Aug 16, 2021). “27 Bad User Experience Examples”. Plerdy. (Access date: 28.03.2022). https://www.plerdy.com/blog/top-website-ux-and-design-mistakes/

JAYE HANNAH. (updated on: JULY 30, 2021). “10 Classic UX Design Fails That Teach Us How Not to Do UX”. CareerFoundry. (Access date: 28.03.2022). https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/10-classic-ux-design-fails/

 

 

 

Week 8. Depiction of an IT professional in Estonia

 

 In Estonia, professional IT specialists must have a wide variety of skills and knowledge to be eligible for working in a quickly developing information technology environment. One of the main qualities that a professional specialist must have is understanding the basics of how a computer works. Throughout 20 years many improvements and changes have been made in computers and other digital devices. Some parts of PC like processors have been changing significantly, some devices like smartphones have been invented and some devices like floppy disks became obsolete. Many less significant things have changed as well and now it is almost impossible to keep up with all the inventions in the IT field, so a good specialist in Estonia must have general knowledge of how devices and their parts work. The same can be said about programming. In those 20 years, Java frameworks and libraries had become immensely big, Python and JavaScript gained more popularity, but some languages became forgotten. Therefore as in Estonia, there are a lot of IT companies a wide general experience in many programming languages is required.
In the previous paragraph, I spoke about the quickly developing IT world and that a specialist must have a good general knowledge of everything, however, this is not enough to achieve great results. The most important in my opinion are problem-solving skills. IT is logic and consistency, those basics have not changed throughout 20 years, because they are the foundation of information technology. While most of the machines still rely on binary numbers those qualities are playing the most important part. IT specialist years of working are a great value for measuring how many problem-solving skills this individual has. Because the skills are a matter of time and passion.
So the third quality is the attitude of a specialist. He must have a passion to solve problems in IT, he must have an objective to improve his skills every day because most of the IT tasks are not easy, and possibly that is the main reason why IT specialists are so valuable in our country. During the last 20 years, more people got involved in IT bringing more competition to the field. So in comparison with IT specialists 20 years ago, you should also be active online to show that you really are a specialist and to not get lost among others who may probably be less experienced. At present, IT specialists must be active in forums and platforms such as Stack Overflow or GitHub to share knowledge and learn from others as well.
And the fourth quality is a profound education in the IT field. It is important because it may give a future specialist all features described above in one place and in a relatively short time. Throughout 20 years, education in the IT field had made considerable changes. Many new programmes are now offered and subjects became more oriented on what IT specialists are doing at their work. Modern subjects in Information Technology universities put a big emphasis on practice and large enterprises try to make education easier and fun by developing programs for learning, writing books and filming videos.
In conclusion, I can say that at present in Estonia, where the IT field is expanding quickly, any of the qualities mentioned above are important to be a professional IT specialist. Any newcomer in IT should be orienting on those qualities to reach proficiency in IT.

Week 7. Ten Commandments of Computer Ethics. Rule 7: Help keep flame wars under control

 

Anger on the Internet is a usual phenomenon when people start swearing at each other for a miserable reason. Such action is called flaming and can be done on purpose when discussing a controversial subject or because of an emotional outburst. Both are caused by anonymity on the Internet, but a good society must try to be sensible with any type of communication. Because of that, Netiquette rules were made in which rule number 7 says to keep the flame wars under control.

 

"An example of flaming"

 

 I think that this rule is correct because of the decision not to prohibit it completely but to keep the flaming under control. People need expression and many of us may find flaming fun and amusing to look at, but when it keeps on going and turns into a war of words, nobody will find it interesting, but rather problematic. For example, 4chan tries to deal with flaming but it often fails to do so. Many people visit imageboards to start flaming or troll someone, thus they got used to visiting such sites only to have fun, but not for constructive talking. The same I can say about controversial groups on Facebook or YouTube. A lot of flaming happens on official pages of platforms because it happens to be that the platform does everything in the teeth of its users. 

 

    "Dogs kill rats YouTube video. Massive flaming in the comment section. Some find it good some find it terrible"

 

 

A very good example is YouTube official site. Before YouTube hid dislike count it was clearly seen by the like/dislike ratio and by hateful comments how many flaming is being made there. By these examples, I want to show that too much flaming will cause only negative outcomes. People will start to massively hate the specified resource, and they will come on this resource just to spread more flaming there.

My personal experience when I was dealing with flaming happened and keeps happening in YouTube, Instagram and Vkontakte social networks. I do not find much flaming on Twitter or Reddit however, maybe because I don’t visit any controversial discussions there.

 

"Instagram flaming"

 

 

Nevertheless, controversial topics in YT and VK are full of hate and flaming and unfortunately, platform managers have not done anything vital so far to stop it. Yes, Instagram and YouTube try to control the words posted in comments but people often bypass these checks. I may highlight that the audience and its manners play a crucial part in the size of flaming. If you would start flaming in a polite community, people will not mention it or notice your bad manners and ask to be polite. In another community with a less sensible audience, the started flaming will be supported by others and will grow in size drastically. It's like lighting a flame in water and in gunpowder. One will not start, the other will explode in a moment. The useless flaming not only create a bad atmosphere but also monopolizes bandwidth for useless swearing. So after all those examples, I can say that it is really important to keep the flame wars under control.

Week 6. What impact does the copyleft have on choosing a software license for one's project?

 

     

        The traditional approach to copyright restricts the freedom to copy works, and in contrast, copyleft seeks to use copyright laws to expand the rights and freedom of people in IT. People use the concept of copyleft so that anyone in the world has the right to use, modify or distribute both the original work and works derived from it, and no one could restrict this right. In general, it can be said that under copyleft, all derivative works should be distributed under the same license as the original work.

The choice of the strong copyleft can be made by developers who want to make an open-source software and allow people to reuse, distribute and remix their work but to keep this development free for everyone. This technique may have a strong effect of making resources and programs free, especially if the software under this license became popular and highly demanded. It may have an effect only if it will be implemented while publishing the first, original program. In another case, for example, when remixing a project, it will not be as successful and probably another license that the project had will not allow doing so. In my opinion, most of the big companies that want to use copyleft will choose this option, because the bigger their project was the more hard work was made. I don't think that developers would want to give their creation to the world knowing that others may resell it and make money, while the developers followed a good manner of copyleft and did not. Therefore they would want others also to follow that idea of free sharing and refusal from sales and implement the strong copyleft.

The weak copyleft choice may be based on the same reasons as the choice of strong copyleft, but with the addition of some exceptions. Especially in the case of creating software libraries. In this case, it more depends on how the product will be used than following the strict rules as in the previous type of copyleft license.

The smaller the project is, the lesser work was made and the easier the developer may let his project go. That means small projects may choose no copyleft at all. This option brings most of the freedom for the users because it allows them to freely use code, remix it and make a profit out of it. This may be the case with enthusiastic people who write small pieces of code, experiment with them or really generous developers who devote their software directly to society.

 

 

 Used materials:

(May 10, 2021). “All About Copyleft Licenses”. Fossa. (Access date: 06.03.2022). https://fossa.com/blog/all-about-copyleft-licenses/

 

(February 09, 2022). “Difference between Copyright and Copyleft in FOSS”. Geeksforgeeks. (Access date: 07.03.2022). https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/difference-between-copyright-and-copyleft-in-foss/

 

Ayala Goldstein. (October 24, 2020). “Open Source Copyleft Licenses: All You Need to Know ”. WhitesourceSoftware. (Access date: 07.03.2022). https://www.whitesourcesoftware.com/resources/blog/open-source-copyleft-licenses/