Explain how an interface designer can protect users of a collaborative interface from hostile or malicious behavior.

What will be an ideal response?

Continuing the train of thought from Question #5 above, there are people who choose to take a less honorable path of disrupting or destroying shared workspaces. To prevent this, companies are now routinely doing background checks on employees to search for clues of past bad behaviors. One can protect oneself by using the highest level Internet security protection such as strong passwords, using proper virus and spyware protection tools, etc. Regular backups are also a level of protection by being readily able to restore the system to its full, working condition. Cybercrime and hacking for political or personal gain (hacktivism) regrettably are a fact of life, and is really outside the scope of this text.



Sometimes reputation is built upon consumer reviews. See (Fig 11.13 from DTUI6) below as an example. A user page on Yelp showing a variety of social activity context including volume of activity like reviews and photos, an “elite” badge, a graph of ratings previously made, feedback on the user’s reviews including if they were useful, funny, or cool, and other compliments. This rich information can help others understand the reliability of this user.