Importance of the design

The Hawaiian false missile alert

 Until humans learn how to command machines with their minds (or vice versa), we're always going to need some sort of menu, control panel or whatever to interact with our machines and tell them to do our jobs for us - Hillabin, Cracked 2012 

Before the AI is developed enough to work without human presence there is always needed those control panels or command-line to the software or device to work. I was searching different kind of disasters that have occurred because of a bad design and there was several of them. Most crucial ones were plane and car crashes. One that got my interest was so called Hawaii Human error even thought the reason wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just bad design that caused the mislick. Usually when bad design or lacking instructions combined pressure is not a good sum of elements.

This Hawaii false missile alert is a good example of a case where a user interface design can do huge misunderstanding and panic for the people. Luckily in this case there wasn’t real danger but a good example that with better design these kind of mistakes could have been prevented too.

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” 

Alert above was sent to Hawaii citizens on 13.01.2018 and it made people to panic and pack their stuff and run away, even thought nothing was going to happen.

According to Don Norman in FastCompany the system is tested twice a day with the person doing the test selecting the test message from a list. In this case, it is believed, the person accidentally selected the wrong message.

“Someone clicked the wrong thing on the computer” - Richard Rapoza

”Three words that can potentially reframe how we think about solutions that can prevent this kind of accident from happening down the road: BLAME THE DESIGN.” - Melnick, Klick 2018

”The main, elementary design rule is: never do a dangerous (or irreversible) action without requiring confirmation,* ideally by a second person who is separated from the person doing the action.” - Norman, FastCompany 2018

Picture of the list (DTowcFJU0AAvtVo)

Of course it’s easier to blame the person who clicked the button to send the message but in the article there was explained well that problems that poor design construct are mainly poor labeling, disorganization, non-differentiated visual treatments and poorly done error prevention.
When the mistake was noticed they informed the citizens as soon as possible and told that there no missiles coming and everything is alright.
Luckily these kind of "fake"disasters  are also an opportunity to learn from our mistakes and make the softwares that we use better, so we don't repeat them again in the future. Here is also a quick good example how the software used for the warning system could be improved. There could be more clear interface with bright colors and simple easily understandable text(labeling). Another feature can be the double-check part, are you sure ? - if yes please confirm.

Example of improved GUI (5-hawaii.png)

Ugly design saves lives!

Smoking has been a major problem all the time and all around the world. The nicotine in it creates addiction and it's difficult to quit when once started. Australia made great approach towards to discrease the amount of smokers.

They actually made history in 2012 when publishing the new cigarette packs with unappealing color as possible and realistic pictures of the consequences of smoking. The color is called “Opaque Couché” and gives an image of death and filth. The packages are covered with ugly  garish photos of smoking-related illnesses like for example tooth problems, tumors, diseased heart muscle and rotted toes etc. The purpose behind this has been getting people to stop smoking and decrease the purchase amount of the cigarette products.

“It’s an unequivocal message that this is a dangerous product and not a lifestyle product.” - Hammond, University of Waterloo

Cigarette packs before (cigs.jpg)

Smoking packages now smoking_1866776c.jpg

According to the study of Victoria White, Tahlia Williams and Melanie Wakefield, the introduction of plain packaging with larger graphic health warnings changed adolescents’ perceptions of cigarette packs and brands. The new packaging and branding has affected enormously to the opinion of smoking and smokers in general and also for its purchasing numbers around the world. They also stated that seven to 12 months after the introduction of standardized packaging in Australia, the appeal of cigarette packs and brands to adolescents who had seen packs in the previous 6 months had decreased significantly.

Sources:

https://www.cracked.com/article_19776_6-disasters-caused-by-poorly-designed-user-interfaces.html (published 17.04.2012, accessed 28.03.2021)

https://www.klick.com/health/news/blog/user-experience/disaster-due-to-disastrous-design/ (published 26.01.2018, accessed 28.03.2021)

https://www.fastcompany.com/90157153/don-norman-what-went-wrong-in-hawaii-human-error-nope-bad-design (published 16.01.2018, accessed 28.03.2021)

https://www.creativesafetysupply.com/articles/safety-colors/ (published 30.08.2016, accessed 28.03.2021) 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/worlds-ugliest-color-could-help-people-quit-smoking-180959364/ (published 09.06.2016, accessed 30.03.2021)

https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_2/ii42 (published 25.02.2015, accessed 30.03.2021)

IT Professionalism in Finland

"Professionalism is a powerful quality. It allows you to fulfill your role to the best of your ability. It helps you to impress and inspire others. And it gives you a deep sense of satisfaction and self-worth." - MindTools 

https://unsplash.com/photos/5fNmWej4tAA

In IT the knowledge and experience of several types of programs and programming languages comes handy. It’s like in real world too, the more you know the better and what comes learning multiple different languages, that’s great.

Nowadays technology has became even bigger part of our daily life and also replaced many of our jobs too. IT which stand for information technology is major part of it. Everyday there is created new and easier ways to handle things and also softwares that we use, are developed to be more and more effectives. The problem with it is that we are not born with the skills and knowledge of IT. We have to learn it by ourselves and what's the better way to learn than listen professionals like highly educated teachers. Nowadays professionalism comes in several shapes and it is hard to describe. I think professionalism is set of various skills and also ability to share your knowledge and experiences to others. Depending on a field different skills and knowledge is needed, sometimes we are luckily able to combine different skills and knowledge to achieve better results too. According to Piia Vilander the most needed and valued skills that was needed in IT in year 2015 were communication skills and networking, internationality and also marketing skills.

In Finland IT has been one of the popular fields all the time, Finnish people have always been interested in technology and especially in designing. Finland is famous of Linux by Linus Torvalds, Nokia, anti-virus development like McAfee , game development like Angry Birds from Rovio and many others. There is almost endless possibilities in IT field in Finland, in the job market they are searching all the time people for developing, testing and design purposes. 

Almost in every university or university in applied sciences you are able to learn/choose something that is related to IT. In general or more in specific way.

The courses are separated into different fields, there are for example business information technology,  software and systems engineering, computer applications, cyber security  etc. According to Barona in 2018 there was stated that there is around 1600 people to be trained for IT-field per year in Finland, now in 2021 it’s probably much more. But still it's not enough. According to Helsinki Times many Finnish companies are interested in hiring specialist people from overseas to fill their positions and help bring the technology field to life. Many companies do, however, have a hard time finding workers from overseas as most of those workers don't speak Finnish or are reluctant to move due to concerns regarding the strained housing market

Personally I haven’t been studying IT in Finland but according to my other studying experiences there I believe the level of IT studies in Finland are very high level too.

A lot has changed during past 20 years and what comes to IT, the core idea has stayed the same but the devices, the ways we use it and what for we used has changed a lot.

I think how IT professionalism is changed in Finland is that is nowadays so called professionals share their information more and are willing to train people more that it used to be. Before people had to search more information by themselves from internet or from library.

Sources:

https://blog.barona.fi/it-alan-osaajamarkkina-nyt-ja-tulevaisuudessa (published 11.11.2019, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://ahkfinnland.de/fi/tietopankki/ajankohtaista/news-details-fi/it-ala-suomen-viennin-kaerjessae (published 26.03.2020, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/87538/Vilander_Piia.pdf?sequence=1 (published 2015, accessed 18.03.2021)

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/professionalism.htm (accessed 21.03.2021)

Treat others the way you want to be treated.

 

”Netiquette" is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication. Netiquette covers both common courtesy online and the informal "rules of the road" of cyberspace.”

 - Virginia Shea

The internet is dichotomous environment, it has a lot of positive vibes and reactions, but then there is also the people who doesn’t care and doesn’t know how to behave.

Like in every situation we have a some kind of patterns and rules how to behave and how not, I think it’s important to have same kind of set of rules in the online environment too.

When reading about the Netiquette by Virginia Shea I think the one of the most important point is the ”Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life”

That people would remember who they are, their powers and knowledge, the people behind the screens and that everyone has feelings.

Think Before You Post EQ9xn3cWoAEuL4y.jpg

People should think what they post online and also how and where they do it. Every platform have their own audience and people who see and are able to react to the post.

For example the post that the person writes to Facebook might get more publicity and reactions than a post in Instagram, it also depends the target audience a lot.

The way how you write and express yourself online is a critical point too when publishing something public, because everyone might not understand what did you originally mean and this can lead a huge misunderstandings, which are pretty usually in the web.

In real life people are more careful of their actions and their opinions but in web, where they are not so easily to be identified, they might forget all the manners and think that they can behave and say whatever they like. Luckily nowadays this kind of behavior has decreased a lot from what it used to be and people have learned more how to behave also online, but there will always be those who don't want to agree with these rules. If everyone would follow the rules of Netiquette and respect others also in the web we wouldn't have major problems like cyberbullying and fake news.

Also nowadays the security and the surveillance has increased in the web, for example Youtube is checking and controlling the videos and comments that are created and one good example from Finland (the only one that I'm familiar with) are the effective internet police officers (Nettipoliisi), whose work is to go around these popular social media platforms and report of any malicious action.

There is many examples in the popular social media platforms, like Facebook, Youtube and Instagram (that I personally use daily), where you are able to see the variety of people’s opinions and how they affect to others.

One hot topic currently is the use of masks and to take or not to take the vaccine for COVID-19.

My Facebook is full of different kind of posts, where people are arguing the pros and cons about the current situation. Some even call that the whole COVID-19 is based on a conspiracy theory, for example that it’s happening because of 5G or the previous actions of Bill Gates.

Often when surfing around internet and especially some places where some kind of chat or forum is involved I feel like people forget easily that there is another human being front of the screen.

I personally think that the Netiquette should be more shared and that everyone should read it at least once. Maybe in someday it’s made a compulsory piece of reading in high school or even before you are able to access internet.

Sources:

http://albion.com/netiquette/ (accessed 11.03.2021)

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/04/covid-top-10-current-conspiracy-theories/ (published 20.04.2020,accessed 11.03.2021))

Copyleft

  

   ”Copyleft is a method for making a software program free, while requiring that all modified and extended versions of the program also be free, and released under the same terms and conditions. When an open source software project is published with a copyleft license, other developers have the right to use, modify, and share the work as long as the reciprocity obligation is maintained.” - Goldstein, Whitesource, 2019

Copyleft logo

 (5D7DED5101BCF9490ABD4FA6DE2EF61FF07D67D0_large.jpg)

Even thought the copyleft is and sounds pretty free concept it has its own strict rules too and for that there is created several of versions and concepts of the Copyleft. Some of the licenses are more permissive than the others. The Copyleft can be classically divided in to four categories; strong and weak ones and also full and part-licenses too. The strong copyright as it's name already says is strong and requires strict license following, where the weak one is not so strict and the user is able to link it to the other licenses for example. What comes to the full and part-licenses, they describe does the particular license affect to the whole software or only to part of it.

In practical copyleft-licenses gives more freedom to create, distribute and develop the software or product, not alone but with the help of others. Gives more freedom for the user and a possibility to change it the way he likes it to view and use. The usefulness of open source is not based only on the exploitation of open source but on reciprocal interaction with open source communities.

A software licence defines what users are allowed to do with the software, possible restrictions to the use, obligations and responsibilities. The aim of the lisence is to protect both developers and users — it gives the license specific rights and it may also include limitations of liability, warranties and warranty disclaimers. Software that is published without a license is legally unusable, because no usage rights are granted by a license. Therefore, it is extremely important to define a license for a software if the software is distributed and not for internal or private use only.

The selection of the right copyleft license depends most of all the purpose of the software, impact and what it’s used for. In many of my sources there was pointed out that it is very important to understand the main differences between different licenses instead of just picking a random license that sounds good. The first step is to understand different license types, and choose a license type that best fits to the needs of the software project and it’s purpose.

"If you ask most developers, they’ll say they want a copyleft, because they want to avoid their work being co-opted or exploited (or even “hijacked”)." - Cartwright, Free Software Magazine, 2008

List of different copylefts and example of them:

Licenses with strong copyleft

• The GNU General Public License - WordPress, Wikipedia 
• The Affero GPL (the extra strong) - Peertube (a free and open-source video platformthat uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers when viewing videos.)

Licenses with weak copyleft 

• The GNU Lesser General Public License - 

  VLC media player (a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software, and streaming media server) 

• The Mozilla Public License - Mozilla Firefox (free and open-source web browser)
• The European Union Public License - created on the initiative of and approved by the European Commission in 22 official languages of the European Union.
• Microsoft Public License and Reciprocal Public License -

Non-copyleft (permissive) licenses 

• The BSD license - Django (high-level Python Web framework that is a set of components that provide a standard way to develop websites fast and easily.)
• The Apache license - IntelliJ IDEA (

  integrated development environment (IDE) written in Java for developing computer software

  )
• The MIT (X11) license - Ruby on Rails (server-side web application framework written in Ruby)

Creative Commons, online content licenses  

(Created more for pictures, videos and articles etc, softwares that uses some of the Creative Commons license are Youtube, Flickr and DeviantART) Those Creative Commons licenses can be divided into next categories:

• CC Zero (CC0)
• CC Attribution (CC BY)
• CC Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
• CC Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND)
• CC Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
• CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)

The GNU Free Documentation License created for documents and other text files.

Sources:

https://www.cio.com/article/2400153/how-open-source-licenses-affect-your-business-and-your-developers.html (published 24.01.2012, accessed 04.03.2021)

http://freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/why_i_choose_copyleft_for_my_projects/ (published 23.09.2008, accessed 04.03.2021)

https://wiki.itcollege.ee/index.php/E-SPEAIT_T6_Computers_and_Laws_II 

https://gofore.com/avoin-avoimempi-copyleft/ (published 08.09.2014, accessed 04.03.2021)

https://www.sofokus.com/fi/blogi/2013/08/01/avoin-lahdekoodi/ (published 01.08.2013, accessed 04.03.2021)

https://fin.afterdawn.com/sanasto/selitys.cfm/copyleft (accessed 04.03.2021)

Reforming Copyrights

The second chapter of ”The Case For Copyright Reform”  written by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström in 2012 is straight forward and interesting but doesn't answer to all the needed questions. The chapter’s name is ”A Constructive Proposal For Copyright Reform”.

The main point of the chapter is stated at the very beginning: 

”The Pirate Party does not want to abolish copyright; we want to reform it. We want to keep copyright for commercial purposes, but we want to set all non-commercial copying and use free.”

My first though about it was mostly positive and that it could work, but also when non-commercial usage and copying would be free it just can’t work as it’s meant to be. It sounds too good to be true to everyone basically be able to use material if they somehow prove that they use it for non-commercial. In this case also how do you define what is non-commercial usage and what’s not ? And who makes the decision for it?

They give detailed and interesting overview of the current situation and tell why their proposal would be effective and should be taken in to a careful consideration.

It explains the situation and the idea from and for both parties.

I like the idea of reforming the copyright laws, because noways usually if something is wrong it gets banned pretty easily. I’m happy that they found possible solution for the ”problem”.

Also the concept freedom of information was mentioned at the beginning of the chapter and it’s interesting how some information should be free to use and also to be restricted at the same time. It made me think how the information we share is and should be classified, who decides what is worth of copyright laws and what’s not.

Their proposal was divided and explained well into six points, which were mortal rights unchanged, free non-commercial sharing, 20 years of commercial monopoly, registration after 5 years, free sampling and a ban on Digital Rights Management 

(DRM).

They also state that the peer-to-peer sharing should be legalized. Which is interesting point, because in that it’s easy to break those copyright laws pretty easily and share data/information that shouldn’t be shared.

Question at the end: ”But how will the artists get paid, if file sharing is set free?”  Is tricky one and I think it’s one of the issues that come across while reforming the laws. 

In general I like the proposal and the idea they proposed that there should be created a specific business model for it to work properly and I agree with that. Without special agreements and arrangements it wouldn’t work as its meant.