Research questions from the list below and give your answer, with reasons and examples. If you are reading this chapter as part of a class – either at a university or in a commercial course – work in pairs then report back to the class.
1) What three widespread computing expectations did not happen? Why not? What three unexpected computing outcomes did happen? Why?
2) What is a system requirement? How does it relate to system design? How do system requirements relate to performance? Or to system evaluation criteria? How can one specify or measure system performance if there are many factors?
3) What is the basic idea of general systems theory? Why is it useful? Can a cell, your body, and the earth all be considered systems? Describe Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis. How does it link to both General Systems Theory and the recent film Avatar? Is every system contained within another system (environment)?
4) Does nature have a best species?Note that success in biology is what survives. Since over 99% of all species that ever existed are now extinct, every species existing today is a great success, and bacteria and viruses are as “evolved” as us. If nature has no better or worse, how can species evolve to be better? Or if it has a better and worse, why is current life so varied instead of being just the “best”?
5) Does computing have a best system? If it has no better or worse, how can it evolve? If it has a better and worse, why is current computing so varied? Which animal actually is “the best”?
6) Why did the electronic office increase paper use? Give two good reasons to print an email in an organization. How often do you print an email? When will the use of paper stop increasing?
7) Why was social gaming not predicted? Why are MMORPG human opponents better than computer ones? What condition must an online game satisfy for a community to “mod” it (add scenarios)?
8) In what way is computing an “elephant”? Why can it not be put into an academic “pigeon hole”? How can science handle cross-discipline topics?
9) What is the first step of system design? What are those who define what a system should do called? Why can designers not satisfy every need? Give examples from house design.
10) Is reliability an aspect of security or is security an aspect of reliability? Can both these things be true? What are reliability and security both aspects of? What decides which is more important?
11) What is a design space? What is the efficient frontier of a design space? What is a design innovation? Give examples (not a vacuum cleaner).
12) Why did the SGML academic community find Tim Berners-Lee’s WWW proposal of low quality? Why did they not see the performance potential? Why did Microsoft also find it “of no business value”? How did the WWW eventually become a success? Given that business and academia now use it extensively, why did they reject it initially? What have they learnt from this lesson?
13) Are NFRs like security different from functional requirements? By what logic are they less important? By what logic are they equally critical to performance?
14) In general systems theory (GST), every system has what two aspects? Why does decomposing a system into simple parts not fully explain it? What is left out? Define holism. Why are highly holistic systems also individualistic? What is the Frankenstein effect? Show a “Frankenstein” web site. What is the opposite effect? Why does sticking “good” components together not always produce a good system?
15) What are the elemental parts of a system? What are its constituent parts? Can elemental parts be constituent parts? What connects elemental and constituent parts? Give examples.
16) Why are constituent part specializations important in advanced systems? Why do we specialize as left-handers or right-handers? What about the ambidextrous?
17) If a car is a system, what are its boundary, structure, effector and receptor constituents? Explain its general system requirements, with examples. When might a vehicle’s “privacy” be a critical success factor? What about its connectivity?
18) Give the general system requirements for browser application. How did its designers meet them? Give three examples of browser requirement tensions. How are they met?
19) How do mobile phones meet the general system requirements, first as hardware and then as software?
20) Give examples of usability requirements for hardware, software and HCI. Why does the requirement change by level? What is “usability” on a community level?
21) Are reliability and security really distinct? Can a system be reliable but insecure, unreliable but secure, unreliable and insecure, or reliable and secure? Give examples. Can a system be functional but not usable, not functional but usable, not functional or usable, or both functional and usable? Give examples.
22) Performance is taking opportunities and avoiding risks. Yet while mistakes and successes are evident, missed opportunities and mistakes avoided are not. Explain how a business can fail by missing an opportunity, with WordPerfect vs Word as an example. Explain how a business can succeed by avoiding risks, with air travel as an example. What happens if you only maximize opportunity? What happens if you only minimize risk? Give examples. How does nature both take opportunities and avoid risks? Should designers do this too?
23) Describe the opportunity enhancing general system performance requirements, with an IT example of each. When would you give them priority? Describe the risk reducing performance requirements, with an IT example of each. When would you give them priority?
24) What is the Version 2 paradox? Give an example from your experience, of software that got worse on an update. You can use a game example. Why does this happen? How can designers avoid this?
25) Define extendibility for any system. Give examples for a desktop computer, a laptop computer and a mobile device. Give examples of software extendibility, for email, word processing and game applications. What is personal extendibility? Or community extendibility?
26) Why is innovation so hard for advanced systems? Why stops a system being secure and open? Or powerful and usable? Or reliable and flexible? Or connected and private? How can such diverse requirements ever be reconciled?
27) Give two good reasons to have specialists in a large computer project team. What happens if they disagree? Why are cross-disciplinary integrators also needed?