Different IT questions

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Course
Tutor
Date
1. Explain how the designers of the product went wrong in designing the instant soup containers
The design of a product can is one of the contributing factors of ensuring the safety of the product when being used by a customer. How a product is designed ensures that customers using the product cannot be harmed in any way when using it. The design of instant soup cups was wrong from the initial design. Having round bases and being tall and narrow and lightweight lowers the center of gravity that renders the container unstable. The containers have the inappropriate height and base ratio. The best way to combat any risk occurring is to redesign the cups and implementing a broad base and using a shorter height. Using the specifications will reduce the burns on children and parents from noodle soup.
2. Differentiating crowdsourcing and users studies
Crowdsourcing is simply the act of obtaining needed ideas, services, or content based on the contributions of a vast number of people that are from a community rather than from the suppliers or employees. On the other hand, user studies refer to a research study that focuses on the use of information that is derived from the end users of a particular product or system. User studies entail extended channels of getting information that are networks. Networks are further categorized into academic, social and workplace networks. Systems that provide information are also included in the user studies. The systems are further divided into digital libraries, intranets, web search systems and information retrieval systems.

Both systems are efficient when it comes to finding out about the market. For instance, crowdsourcing provides the most effective strategy when it comes to content marketing. Crowdsourcing helps marketers to identify the appropriate channels when they will inject their investments and get payoff where their content sells. Crowdsourcing helps in the speeding up the rate of content creation. Crowdsourcing helps you get potential customers and customers. Crowdsourcing provides you with creative choices and diversity. Using crowdsourcing offers diverse perspectives on every marketing concept and strategy since the ideas are brought in by different people. Applying this concept of creative choice and diversity helps draw your target, potential customers. The target audience helps you to know the different ways to approach them hence forming the ideal marketing strategy. User studies has its benefits as well. User studies aid in decision making. Since user studies focus on the usage patterns they contribute to identify the areas that are related to the information in organizations. Using user studies also contributes to identify and understand the users. Understanding the user’s contributes to implement the best decisions most of them that are cost-based such as operational and cost-based and also the costs according to the use. Between both methods Crowdsourcing is the best method since it helps the seller to get the ideas directly from the customers themselves hence providing the best strategy for implementing the needs of the customers.
3. Natural settings evaluation environment and a living lab evaluation
Natural settings evaluation environment is an environment whereby the evaluation is done on the natural environment unlike in a Laboratory where there are many controlled variables or a simulated environment. The goals of natural evaluation method focus on the authenticity of the results unlike in a Laboratory setting where the results could be manipulated or tampered with. Conducting an evaluation based on the natural setting has various advantages and include getting reliable data. An example is the evaluation of a child’s behavior in their natural setting. Evaluating a child in his/her natural environment enables the researcher to observe the child’s skills in the real-life setting and also multiple methods to collect the assessments are used. A living lab is an innovation or a research concept that deal with an open innovation system that is user-centered either in a regional or a territorial context. Living labs are based on a systematic combination of user-driven approach and scenarios and technological articles that are used in the real-life cases. Living labs provide significant advantages as it utilizes different approaches to gathering the required data. Some of the methods include crowdsourcing, action research, experimentation, participatory design and other methods that involve usability. Using a living lab ensures that a variety of methods are used hence providing an efficient quality of the data achieved.
4. Product feedback has to be incorporated into the design for the benefit of the user
Product feedback means providing information that is helpful or criticism that helps to improve performance or a product. Integrating product feedback into the design of a product is essential. The customers can evaluate the product as they are using the system helping the developers improve the overall product and satisfying the customer’s requirements. There are two types of feedback olfactory and haptic feedback. Haptic feedback uses senses of touch to provide feedback to the end user while olfactory feedback relies on nerves and sense of smell. Some of the designs that relies on haptic feedback include most of the touchscreen panels whereby the user responds according to their sense of touch. Feedback is essential in many ways. Feedback provides ways to enhance the performance. It also provides mechanisms to keep learning.
5. Examine the primary reasons why project management causes a cultural change
Project management is defined as the application of skills, knowledge, techniques and tools to all the project activities to meet the project requirements. Project management causes cultural shifts that have the following effect on the overall project. Understanding the different cultures of the people in the project helps the project manager to engage all the team members. This helps in realization of the importance of motivation and emotions and helps in identifying the behavioral risks by using mind reading strategies that are intuitive. The reasons project management causes cultural changes is due to mostly behavioral responses from different team members involved in the team. The impact of the cultural change affects integrative information technology by improving a company’s efficiency and the overall revenue. An example of cultural change caused by project management is cultural capital. This refers to the values, aspirations and attitudes that influence the behavior of all the stakeholders of a project.
6. Importance of project sponsorship
Project sponsorship refers to ownership of a project that is in terms of financial accountability. Project sponsorship however also means that the person or organization funding the project may put their name on the project or also pin their reputation on the project. A project sponsor is the person who enables or justifies a project, oversees it and maintains the accountability for the successful delivery of the project ( West). Project sponsorship is essential in many ways. It helps to appreciate the corporate strategy, offer profound knowledge in all the organizations operations. Project management also helps in improving the stakeholder’s coordination and lastly helping in giving the project a sense of direction by providing the necessary guidelines to enhance the success of the project.
7. Denial of service attacks (DOS attacks)
Denial of service attacks are attacks on networks that are designed to incapacitate the network or interrupting the delivery of online services. This is achieved by flooding the network with useless traffic. The types of DOS attacks are, Distributed denial of service, volume-based attacks, and protocol-based attacks and lastly application based DOS attacks. Denial of service attacks takes advantage of the flaws of network protocols such as TCP, UDP and IP. The protocol attacks focus on server resources and bypassing firewalls to gain access to systems. A UDP attack (User Datagram protocol) attack occurs in the following way. The attack focusses on attacking random ports on a target system such as a website or an online based system with a vast number of UDP packets ( Raghavan and Dawson). This causes the host system to check repeatedly for any application using the port when no port is found. The reply is usually in the form of an ICMP unreachable packet. The process is repeated and drains the resources of the host leading to inaccessibility or poor service delivery. The best methods of detecting a Dos attack is implementing an intrusion detection system and integrating it with a robust firewall. Implementing these strategies will ensure that the website or system will be secure and will help to detect any intrusion in the system. A distributed denial of service is more robust compared to a simple denial of service. The attack uses a large number of compromised systems that are a botnet and attack a single target. The attacks starts by compromising one computer and making it the attack master. The attack master then infects other systems and eventually use all their resources to attack the specified target causing slow service delivery or complete shutdown.
8. Windows and Linux password management methods
The Windows operating system has various methods of password management. The password management methods provide the services of remembering dozens of passwords for different accounts. The password managers enable the user to have a master password whose work entails providing access to an individual system. Most password managers in Windows operating systems are software-based and provide an array of services such as. Creating strong passwords, storing of unlimited number of passwords and lastly managing data from different computers seamlessly (Tipton). The password manager example software’s include LockCrypt, KeepPass and Lastpass. The Linux operating system also has it various password management services. The services are either software based or using the Linux command line tools. Examples of Linux password management tools are KeePassX, and GpPassword manager. The Linux password management tools also provide the same advantages such as the Windows password management tools. The discrepancy is that the user can manage the passwords via the Linux shell and access different services and this proves to be most secure as the user can customize the shell according to the required specifications. Using of different hashing algorithms will ensure that different hashes are generated are not similar to the other. This is achieved using the different encryption mechanism such as RSA encryption and the triple DES encryption and thus proper mechanisms of securing the system.
Works Cited
Raghavan, S V and E Dawson. An Investigation into the Detection and Mitigation of Denial of Service (DoS) Attacks: Critical Information Infrastructure Protection. Springer Science & Business Media, 2011. Print.
West, David. Project Sponsorship: An Essential Guide for Those Sponsoring Projects Within Their Organizations. Gower Publishing, Ltd, 2012. Print.
Tipton, Harold F. Information Security Management Handbook, Sixth Edition. CRC Press, 2007. Print.