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Effects of New Communications Technology Applications on Society
Electronic Commerce (“e-commerce”)
Buying and selling – can be by interactive television, web sites, e-mail.
Advantages
- 24 hours a day, on line order tracking, immediate availability check
- Price comparison websites (Kelkoo, Pricerunner – ACTIVITY try these out!)
- Ebay – what is it? – provides ready access to buying and selling for ALL (ACTIVITY – try it out - www.ebay.ca )
- Implications for busy people, disabled, housebound, those living in rural areas.
Disadvantages
- Giving out bank/card details, delivery problems, view/feel before you buy, returning goods.
- Most of these points reflect major customer care issues for the new businesses – get it right and you can make major profits – e.g. Amazon
Video Conferencing
Use of microphone and camera to interact with another person
Advantages: No travel costs, jetlag, time off work, planning to assemble required people in one location, immediate contact anywhere in the world.
Implications: Control – ability to check up
Disadvantages: Cost of equipment, compatibility of equipment, planning to set it up, hardware failure, technical expertise of user.
Text Messaging
- Use of mobile phones…relatively cheap and available
- Very easy to keep in touch
- Emergence of a new modern shorthand
With new technologies there is a need for:
Retraining
- Training the individuals to cope with the developing technologies
- Rate of technological change means that training is ongoing
- Re-skilling to cope with changing work practices/regimes
- For example call centres being set up in traditional coal mining areas
- Redirection of people’s careers by giving them new skills
- With changing rate of technology, skills need to be transferable
- Potential loss of old skills (e.g. traditional methods) and a reliance on the new.
Standards
What is a standard?
- A standard is a technical specification that has been approved by a standardising body
- e.g. HTML (the web page language) is approved by W3C (www.w3c.org), the worldwide Internet standards body
- Standards are usually a voluntary convention, but with many people using it there is often no reason to do things (make products, write webpages, etc) another way
- Standards include elements relating to:
- Technology
- Health & Safety
- Environment (disposal, etc)
- Consumer protection (e.g. privacy)
- If a customer buys a product with a standard, the criteria have been met.
Each standardising body issues standards in its area. In order for its standardised products to work with another body’s standards there needs to be overlap and consistency between different standards.
These are known as harmonised standards
Examples: technologies for PCs (USB, Firewire, CD Rom are standardised so many manufacturers can produce compatible devices – there are many firms which make MP3 players, but they all work in the same way, albeit with some different functions)
Importance of Standards
Required so that a wide range of different products that are available as separate entities can work together in a specific application.
- For example, if you buy a telephone you expect it to work with your telephone system – it does because of standards.
- If items meet a set standard then they have to have passed a series of tests
- This means they have clear levels of performance and quality
- Reduces uncertainty – as a purchaser you known it will work if it has the standard (e.g BSI kitemark)
Increases choice in the market place
System Life Cycle
Definition of the Problem
- Determining what the problem is that is to be solved
- Can be generated by the management
- Should be very specific not general in nature
- Series of criteria are stated that must be met for the problem to be eradicated (often known as “Objectives” or “User Requirements”)
Investigation and Analysis
- Verification of the Problem
- Must make sure that the problem given is the problem to be solved – is it the ‘real’ problem
- You need to find out more about the existing system and the problem
- Use of variety of techniques
- Questionnaires/interview & Observation
- Following a paper trail (documentation of current methods)
- Ways of organising the information gathered include:
- System diagrams
- Data flow diagrams
- Organisational charts
Design
- Designing a solution
- Interfaces
- Input/Output documents
- Procedures – what happens to the data
- File structures
- Access, search and sort routines
- Design of testing
- Prototyping
Development
- Taking the design and putting it into practice
- May be done by a different team of people from the Analysis
- Writing programming code
- Creating documents/reports
- Screen designs become reality
Testing
Testing data includes:
- Normal data - Everyday correct data
- Extreme data - Correct data on the boundaries of tolerance
- Erroneous/Invalid - Data that is incorrect
- Test individual routines
- Test whole components
- integration between components
- Test entire system
- User acceptance testing
Implementation
- Changeover methods
- Direct - Old system stops and new one begins
- Parallel - Systems run together for a set period of time – results compared
- Phased/Pilot - Part of a system is brought on line
- Requires:
- Equipment in place (hardware and software)
- Training
- Data changeover/conversion/importing
Evaluation
- Does the finished solution meet its requirements.
- Does it solve the problem?
Maintenance
- Corrective
- Fixing bugs
- Adaptive
- Adapting the system to changes in the environment
- Perfective
- Improving the performance of the system – tweaking
- Maintenance is ongoing – never stops.
- Can include things such as checking paper in the printer, backup of files, etc
Requirements Specification and System Specification
These are the 2 key documents that are produced in the Systems Life Cycle to help ensure success. You need to know the difference between the two of them
The contents of the requirements specification:
- What the system should do
- Individual targets it needs to meet
- It is needed for evaluation
- The contents of the system specification:
- How the system meets the requirements
- What is needed to make the system work
- Technical documentation - the user interface design, its functionality, how it relates to systems data and other system functions.
Also See
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