Reference no: EM133354164

Conduct a situational analysis of the provided example to identify issues in human factors and ethics.

Scenario

You have just started a new job as a development team leader. You have been asked to evaluate a smartphone-based online travel management system that is in development, to identify any issues that this new software might have from the human factors or ethical perspectives. This system tracks the trips that a person is planning to take, or taking, with information on hotels, flights and other useful information, including pop-ups to warn the user that they are about to miss a flight. For security, the user must log in to the application once per day, to minimise the chances of a data breach in case their phone is lost. The software is based on an older system that is being updated to run in the mobile (phone) environment. There is an existing client base that the software has been serving for the past 10 years and all these clients are being migrated into the new environment.

Because of growing costs, the original web-based application will be shut down in favour of the new mobile system one month after the launch of the mobile platform. The mobile platform will have built-in advertising to offset development and operational costs. Only people on the mobile system will have access to their records of travel from before the changeover point. Users must access the system yearly to keep their accounts 'live', or the accounts will be deleted 366 days from time of last activity. The system uses two-factor authentication to protect user accounts, where each login generates a message sent to a phone number registered by the user and the user must enter this code to continue logging in. If there is no phone number, the system sends an e-mail to the user to request a phone number.

As a guide for your analysis, consider the difference in human factors between a web-based environment, which can be viewed on many different types of computers, and the presentation of a mobile application. Draw on your own knowledge and experience of using a system across two platforms to identify potential human factor issues. To guide your ethical analysis, think about the users that have been associated with the system over the past 10 years and what is happening with their data.

Task

1. Identify up to four human factor issues with this software and its development, describing what each issue is.

2. Identify up to four ethical issues with this software and its development, describing what each issue is.

3. Briefly outline how this software development process could be improved with fewer human factor and ethical issues.