Your company is developing a self-serve kiosk that allows visitors (non-employee

Question

Your company is developing a self-serve kiosk that allows visitors (non-employees) to print out "guest" badges to wear on the premises. The kiosk will allow users to enter basic information (such as name), take a picture and print the image and name on the badge. The kiosk will be sold to other companies, but you are "testing" the system at your company site. In order to promote participation, you are passing out free food vouchers for your company cafeteria if employees "test" the system. Data will be gathered indirectly using automated logging (screen captures, button clicks, etc.) as well as capturing video of users.

1) Discuss the ethics of this type of observation.

2) Discuss the pros and cons of this type of data gathering.

Explanation / Answer

Answer)

The company is developing a self-serve kiosk that allows visitors (non-employees) to print out "guest" badges to wear on the premises. This is a fairly automated process which allows the users to enter basic information (such as name), take a picture and print the image and name on the badge. This kiosk will be sold to other companies, but for testing purposes of the system at the company sites and to promote the usage and familiarity with the device and the process we are passing out free food vouchers for your company cafeteria if employees "test" the system. However using this technique, data will be gathered indirectly using automated logging (screen captures, button clicks, etc.) as well as capturing video of users.

1) Ethics of this type of observation.

The ethics involved in this observation are that the system will be tested using the data of the user. However you should remember that these are not actual users and they are not attracted to the process. The problem is that they have come for the free food vouchers for your company cafeteria which you are providing for testing the system with their co-operations. Thus ethically speaking, this kind of testing may not lead to the best result of the system and can lead to non-actual scenarios. We should test the system using actual users and find out problems, rather than luring users with food vouchers.

The data gathering here is also unethical if this is done without the users knowledge in the system. When we use a system, we generally want that our data have to be asked before recoding the data, ask us adequate permissions before using our data. Thus here when, data will be gathered indirectly using automated logging (screen captures, button clicks, etc.) as well as capturing video of users, it should be made clear to them using terms and conditions and disclaimers that the data is being recorded for testing purposes and the types of data that are being captured. No data should be captured unethically taking advantage of the employees/users, otherwise that would be unethical.

2) Pros and cons of this type of data gathering.

Apart from the unethicality which maybe involved in this type of data gathering, we need to understand the pros and cons involved in this type of data gathering. The pros are that the company staff and employees will be able to test the system before it is being sold out in the market and thus the testing stays internal and the results of the testing can be analyzed internal and corrections can be made to the system if required. The cons are that the employees are not actual users and they are not attracted to the process and thus may not lead to actual use cases and thus testing performed using this process may not lead to revealing actual defects in the system.

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