TECHNOLOGY CRITIQUES

Social & Mobile Technology Critiques

Introduction2

Facebook Application2

Challenges for Facebook as a Groupware application3

A Disparity (Group benefits vs. Individuals benefits)3

The Critical mass problems3

Failure to Intuition4

Exception Handling, Unobtrusive accessibility and evaluation difficulties4

The Adoption Process5

Disruption in the Social Processes5

Design features, important aspect of the Groupware Applications7

Facebook “Create Account”7

“Deleting” An Account on Facebook7

Tagging the Friends on photographs8

Feeds8

Facebook new Platform of Application Programming Interface (API)9

Public Search Listing10

Social Advertising and Pages10

Conclusion11

References12

Social & Mobile Technology Critiques

Introduction

The single-user applications are designed for discretionary use, so there is a need to appeal an individual user, providing easy to use and customized applications. In contract, applications designed for large systems, organisations and groups are tailored to facilitate the group demands at the same time the individual's needs. The failure of a groupware application may be more expensive as compared to a discretionary application, which may arise because the designers may not understand the differences between the designing and evaluation of the groupware and single-user applications (Grudin, J., & Palen, L., 1995).

The social networking application as a groupware product is crucial to success as it addresses the society's needs of communication with providing the individual settings that may result in a mixed reaction of group members who may or may not be satisfied by the same features of the application, at the same time. Thus, emphasize is on the better understanding of the problems and challenges by the designers. The critique briefly outlines the challenges for a groupware application designer as well as examines the successful approaches to support the problems in the current design (Grudin, J., & Palen, L., 1995).

Facebook Application

The subject of this critique is Facebook application as its world's largest social networking platform. It has been used as a tool to spread awareness and for changing public opinion, which ultimately influences the individuals, businesses and politics. Facebook is an example of a poorly designed social and mobile computing application as it does not completely utilises the social and mobile computing concepts, although there are some well designed features, the application failed to meet some of the potential challenges related to the individual's privacy that have increased the concerns amongst its users. Thus, the critique focuses on the deficiencies in the design features of Facebook. (Electronic Privacy Information System, 2012).

Challenges for Facebook as a Groupware application

The challenges for Facebook as a groupware application include the following.

A Disparity (Group benefits vs. Individuals benefits)

The potential challenges for a groupware developer are; How to provide effortless communications to people and effectively understanding the nature of collaboration in the application? (Gruden, 1991, pp. 30-34). The confusion lies in understanding the nature of the cooperative work." (Bardram, 1998, pp. 89). Facebook is a social networking website so the features must deliver the collective benefits as well as consider the individual's security and privacy needs. The designer must better categorize the nature of collaborations taking place within the network, to recognize the needs to redesign the existing features attaining the individual's satisfaction and providing advantages to the ...