User Experience

What limitations should be imposed on datamining of email traffic patterns?

E-mail traffic is one of the main target of intelligence surveillance to detect terrorist and other malicious activities. Its rather easy and result oriented when compared to wiretapping of other data streams. This is because mails send or received can be easily linked to a chain that it belongs to. It can be used to identify the community that the email belong to. I would personally suggest unlimited right to analyze any suspicious traffic identified by pattern analysis. Various accepted methods are being experimented to effect this.

Rather than directly wiretapping and analyzing the content of individual mail in detail, the suggested method is to “look for the critical links that form bridges or betweenness of separate groups” (Muir, 2003). This would bring out a group of people communicating stuff that can include terrorist activities. Suggested method is to use automated pattern analysis to detect for suspicious communication and if any such is identified, intelligence force may use CALEA to further take actions.

Here’s a link to ‘Process Mining’ that introduces a new method of result oriented data-mining to uncover social networks from e-mail traffic. The method works on event logs created by e-mail clients and tries to uncover social relationships that connects people, potentially applicable to trace terrorist groups.

Process mining as applied to email-traffic is to -

1. Create event logs out of email (subject, To-from ids, send/received dates, mail headers etc) such as those handled by MS Outlook, usually dumped into a database.

2. Use the so called ProM framework to mine the event log to uncover social relationships.

It is also true that there should be limitations applied to data mining that will not search for specific content in an email, as there are privacy concerns attached to it. All data mining techniques are to be “privacy-preserving”. Here’s a nice article – Privacy preserving data mining -, in which they outline the current state of this procedure that could be effectively utilized for a controlled data mining in intelligence surveillance, including e-mail traffic.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.

Is there a more effective strategy for helping developing countries increase the computer and information literacy of their children?

Intel’s Maloney’s words – “It’s about the Web more than anything. I have young kids …….. doesn’t have access to the Web is overwhelming” – is very striking. OLPC efforts might be an answer to this concern. Strategy and plan alone doesn’t work when we are talking about reforming developing nations, cost effective infrastructure is also important. I would suggest that manufacturing information processing devices such as the XO should be done to reduce the TCO as low as possible.

OLPC website at http://www.laptop.org/en/laptop/ describes the OLPC efforts in detail, their mission, vision and even hardware, software specs. The cool part that I liked is that they are using Open source tools and solutions to build the system. This will open up new realms to introduce and support Linux based Open-source systems into schools and other educational institutions which are looking for cost effective methods of increasing the computer and information literacy of the students.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.

What can be learned from educational experiences where all students in certain school districts have been given computers?

The lesson learned should be lack of effective direction and control in implementing the plan. I remember from IST 601 that we should control technology, reverse should not happen. As wise users of technology, we should devise clear plans as how technology will be used, especially when it is to be used by kids. If we would have done that, things would have been far better.

I would suggest XO model laptops which are tailor made with the specific usage in schools and by kids. There should be restriction on the kind of websites or URLs that could be visited using the limited web capability of the device (A firewall which allows only listed websites, is a good choice). I am not going into detail how we can secure the unintended usage of web and multimedia.

I was just hearing the news on TV which showed a school in US that encourages students to use drugs and do sex. If the standard in schools drop to this level, there is no surprise that there is no proper control over usage of laptops which were intended for academic purposes. What I mean here is that it is the facility or the management or the party who implement the technology program, should make sure that it is well utilized.

Article copyright (c) 2010 – 2020 – Deepesh Joseph (deepeshjoseph@yahoo.com)
Get all articles from www.getallarticles.com. Be informed and gain knowledge. Good resource for research and reviews.

Should carriers have the freedom through contracts and licenses to shape how their networks will be used?

Again this is an instance of protecting consumer rights and freedom in utilizing the digital medium. The carriers have a very important role in maintaining a healthy pipe that is effectively utilized. There should be efforts to setup regulation and standards to avoid piracy and unauthorized usage of network traffic.

At the same time the carriers should not be allowed to take control of freedom of network usage for the sake of mere control in the market place. Urge for Control and power has made the situation worse. In my opinion FCC should take an active role in influencing the legislature to pass important rules pertaining to Net Neutrality in the fullest form. All lobbying efforts from the top powers should be discouraged.

Article Copyright (c) Deepesh Joseph 2010 – 2020

“Cognitive Dissonance” and how to ease it

Cognitive dissonance is an insecure feeling, or lingering doubts, consumers sometimes have after making large purchases. One way to reduce Cognitive dissonance (CD) is to introduce full money back guarantee on dissatisfaction within a stated time period, say 2-3 weeks after purchase. Another way to reduce CD is by allowing product evaluations where the user is allowed to use the product for a limited time period and then has the option whether to buy it or not. As a marketing manager of a desktop software, I will make the trial version of the software available for free download over the internet. Users can freely download, test, evaluate and then extend the trial period if they wish to, by purchasing the product. This way, the users are devoid of any dissatisfaction after purchase, since they have evaluated the software fully.

Article Copyright – Deepesh Joseph (2003-2020)

Research Reference:
1. Williams C. (2007). Management (4th ed., ). Thomson South Western.

"Elements of User Experience"

“Elements of User Experience”

(My reflections on the referred article from Garret)

Garret’s presentation of ‘Elements of User Experience’ touched all vital aspects of web development that can affect user experience. What I liked most is the way the document brings into light how these user elements gets their unique roles in a web-based software interface or in a rudimentary hypertext system (eg: a company web-site). Another unique thing that I noticed is the way Garret distinguishes between Interaction Design and Information Architecture.

Organizational Behavior has its effects on web development during the conception/abstract phase. I think organizational behavior has a tremendous impact on how web development should proceed along with other driving factors such as goals and strategies. I shall reflect this topic based on my experience in implementing and managing web-based e-governance systems.

The stated goal of all these e-governance programs are to make government more transparent and approachable to the citizens by providing various citizen oriented services. Many a times, less focus is given to the original goal of providing an effective citizen oriented service. Sometimes they prefer to offer development projects to their pet company. Since the conceptualization, design and development methods varies for each company and since new government takes rule periodically, the web based systems undergoes re-design starting from visual design and most of the time, goes to the extend of changing the basic Information architecture. This has a major impact on user experience in terms of keeping up with changing/inconsistent designs. The web-site might lose credibility as it appears as a online store to display a party’s personal preferences and culture without rationality or goal oriented design and architectures.

Governments often promote their propaganda and advertise their progress in terms of various programs and incentives. This reflect as changing web-site content design, visualization and sometimes as changing web-site objectives and Information Architecture. For example, the new minister wants to display photographs (searchable) of his department’s main activities on the web-site and the current web-site does not have a photo-gallery. This calls for change in site’s original objective, which is to serve the citizens. Information Architecture needs to be changed since we need to add new section ‘Photo Gallery’ and appropriate changes need to be made to the navigation and search sub-system. When such internal politics (not party politics, but personal preferences) wants to satisfy their personal interests, the web-site might be looked up on as a mere center to expose personal achievements – This might lead to less user acceptance.

Reference:

Garrett J.J. (March, 2000). The Elements of User Experience. Retrieved from http://www.jjg.net/elements/pdf/elements.pdf on May, 2008.

(c) Deepesh Joseph, 2004-2009