Description:

8.2. Product liability: identify any potential hazards in the proposed design, e.g., changes that may occur during the useful lifetime

9.2. Product liability: provide solutions to eliminate hazards identified in Assignment 8.2, e.g., changes that may occur during the useful lifetime

Program Outcome 4: (Ethical and Professional Conduct)

4.3 (Professionalism) Students will be able to understand the associated professional responsibilities.

1. Identify any potential hazards in the proposed design, e.g., changes that may occur during the useful lifetime

• As the platform grows in size, it will require larger databases, servers, and increased bandwidth to serve more users. This will make it harder and more expensive to provide the same quality service to more customers.

• The platform may have to make changes to follow future legislation changes, such as having to change the user privacy policy, content moderation system, etc... 

• Future updates to web browsers, operating systems, and operating systems becoming outdated could affect users who use older browsers and/or systems that are no longer supported by their respective manufacturer. Supporting users using outdated systems and browsers may become difficult and expensive, and also potentially limit future improvements to the platform in an attempt to keep compatibility with these outdated systems.

2. Provide solutions to eliminate hazards identified in Assignment 8.1, e.g., changes that may occur during the useful lifetime

• The platform should use a database that can easily expand in size and the platform's backend should be designed in a way so that it runs and serves the customers with the same experience throughout the platform's expansion. Using AWS or other hosting methods with plans that allow for easily adding server capacity to serve more users.

• Any changes to the user policy, content moderation system, or other major platform features should be clearly communicated to users in multiple ways to ensure users are aware of any changes. This would include at least an email and some communication to the user on the platform itself. 

• To still allow users to access the platform, a "legacy" version of the platform can be created that is compatible with those outdated systems and browsers, but may lack features or changes that come out with the platform for current up-to-date devices. Another solution that could also be used with "legacy" versions is to allow public API access, which allows users to create their own platform accessing sites or apps that may support these outdated platforms, but that does carry the risk of abuse from bad actors and doesn't guarantee that someone else makes a different app to access the platform for users on outdated devices.