Software Design

INCLUSIVITY

Inclusive software should take into consideration the different end users who will likely use the product. software developers, have a responsibility to ensure that this is the case. Furthermore, software products that do not take into account different users are less likely to secure a significant market share.

Software design and development is a field that requires various skills and abilities. Companies engaged in the development of software should provide an inclusive work environment where the different strengths of their employees are recognized, utilized and respected. Software development involves far more than programming skills. Personnel are required with strong communication, teamwork, attention to detail, creativity, design and problem-solving skills. Different personnel will possess these skills in varying proportions. It is the job of management to foster and encourage the development and enhancement of skills in the workplace.

In this section, we consider perspectives to increase the inclusivity of software products as well as the skills required by personnel involved in the design and development of software.

PERSPECTIVES TO INCREASE THE INCLUSIVITY OF SOFTWARE

Let us now examine a number of perspectives that should be considered when designing software solutions. In most cases, these perspectives will have direct consequences to the design of the user interface.

Cultural and social perspectives

The culture of a people can be described as the set of ways of living built up over a period of time and passed from generation to generation. It is important that the beliefs and language of different cultures be considered when designing software. Similarly, the social structure of societies is influenced by their underlying culture.

How do we cater for these differences in practice? Firstly, we must understand or at least be empathetic to the needs of other cultures. It is not possible to be an expert on all cultures; however we can easily include users from a variety of cultures as part of the testing processes occurring during development. For example, in most western cultures we have a Christian name and a surname. This is not the case in many Asian cultures where a formal name and an informal name are more commonly used. Testing that includes users from the Asian culture, would quickly highlight this difference.Numbers, currency, times and dates are another common area of difference between cultures. In Australia, we express dates using day then month then year (e.g.. 25/112002). In America, they more commonly use month then day then year (e.g.. 1/25/2002). Again, those used to an alternative format, would soon encounter problems. Similarly, the format of numbers and currency is different in other countries. Sweden uses a comma as its decimal point and a period as a multiplication sign. 5.2 in Sweden would mean 5 times 2 and 3,255 would mean 3 point 255, The dominant language of a country should be used on the user interface when applications are to be sold to those cultures. Many large-scale systems manage to utilize any number of languages by storing the text used to label the interface in a text file that is loaded as the application starts. By altering this single text file the language used by the application can be customized to suit any foreign language. It may not be practical to rewrite our interfaces using a large variety of foreign languages, however we can design them using English that is clear, consistent and unambiguous. In this way users whose first language is not English are more able to comprehend our user interfaces. Cultural differences are often prevalent in regard to religious beliefs. Many religions worship at a particular time during the week. Perhaps software can be written so that processor intensive batch operations can be performed at this time. Attempts at humor within software can often be in bad taste to those with different religious beliefs. Similarly graphics, particularly many appropriate in western cultures, are deemed inappropriate in many eastern cultures. Increased awareness of the audience, including minority cultures and religions, is a vital step in developing culturally inclusive software.

Economic perspectives

Economic perspectives relate to the generation, distribution and use of income and wealth. This can be viewed on a global, national, local or industry specific scale. At present software development is a new industry that is growing in both breadth and overall volume; a very healthy economic situation. As software developers, we have a responsibility to ensure consideration is given to the economic situation of purchasers of software products. This is necessary to ensure the industry maintains a solid position in the market place in the years to come. Unlike most other industries, the cost of software products is most significantly influenced by its design and development costs; the production costs being relatively insignificant. To achieve equality of access to technologies such as software requires that the technology is available at a cost that is economically viable for the widest possible audience. Let us consider some issues related to design and development costs, which in turn influence the final purchase price for users.

Quality

Quality is a measure of how well a product meets the needs of its clients. A product
that better meets the needs of the user will be more successful, however quality costs
money. A software product developed for a single user cannot economically be
produced to the same quality standards as one produced for the global market. A
'balance must be found between cost and quality.

Nature of the market

Software developers must understand the market needs before embarking on new
product development projects. It is not economically feasible to develop a product
where the need it is intended to meet is of less value than the product's cost. A
feasibility study should be undertaken to determine economic feasibility of any new
software project. As software developers, we should acknowledge that some market
needs are better met by non-computer based solutions.
Management of the software design and development process
There are various software development approaches, suited to the
creation of different products. Choosing a suitable approach will result in a more
economically viable product. Different work environments can also influence those
involved in software development. It is often possible for developers to work flexible
hours and to work from home. By creating structures that help developers work more
effectively, managers will reduce costs and increase the quality of the software produced.

Influences on pricing

Companies are ultimately in business to make money. This is the basis of most
western capitalist economies. History shows us that companies that have a monopoly
in their industry tend to produce inferior products at higher costs to consumers. As a
result these companies make large profits. Competition and in some cases government
regulation can assist in ensuring software products are sold at realistic prices and are
within the financial grasp of a wide audience.

Gender perspectives

In most cases the first thing we ask when a new baby is born is whether it is a boy or a
girl. In actuality, this is probably the first thing we perceive when we meet anybody
for the first time. We seem to inherently know and sense the differences between the
sexes. We don't need to view a face or hear a voice; small almost imperceptible cues
almost always allow us to correctly identify the gender of a person. So what are the
major differences and how should these differences be included when designing and
developing software?

Firstly, both men and women should be included in the software design and
development process. At the time of writing, men dominate the industry. Many view
this as a natural consequence resulting from one of the major perceived differences
between men and women. Programming is viewed as a technical, mathematical
process with rigid boundaries. Research shows that rightly or wrongly, men
predominate in these types of occupations. Since men are engaged in the creation of
software, it follows that some bias is likely to exist towards males in the products they
develop.

Global Credit Crisis

　Ocaya (2012) state that credit crisis is a financial market or economic meltdown of lending the funds to the borrower and cannot get back, it evaluated by severe shortage of money or credit bring accumulation of bad debts, defaults and falling financial institutions among others. However, the experts and economists is unclear as what form a credit crisis. The Wall Street defines a credit crisis as a “period during which borrowed funds are difficult to get and, even if funds can found, interest rates are very high”.

　　Credit crisis mostly began in 2007. The effect of credit crisis has brought fall down on housing market in some country resulting in foreclosures and unemployment. In addition, the credit crisis had an immediate effects on property markets but has spread into global trade and has affected the overall prediction global economy growth , forcing growth target of many countries changing down. While they are some countries had not severely affected by credit crisis.

　　This critical discuss or analysis involve a title of bank CEO incentives were a major causes in credit crisis that links to the journal of “Bank CEO incentives and the credit crisis”, written by Rudiger Fahlenbrach and Rene M. Stulz and other journal as well.

　　Fahlenbrach and Stulz (2011) stated that investigation of explanations for the dramatic collapse of the equity capital of much of the banking industry in the U.S, one highlight argument is that bank executive has poor incentives during the credit crisis. They decide how closely the interests of the bank CEO aligned with those of their shareholders before the start of the crisis, whether this can explain performance of banks in the cross-section during the credit crisis and how bank CEO do during the crisis. Besides that, corporate governance specialist and economic profession find that since Adam Smith have considered interest of management are better aligned with those of their shareholders when compensation of managers increases when shareholders gain and fall when shareholders lose. Micheal, Rao and William (2006) suggests that an executive's holdings of stock options could play a significant role in aligning shareholder interests with managerial incentives.

　　On average, bank CEO had powerful incentives to maximize shareholder wealth by 2006. They show that in their sample the median value of a CEOs equity stake., which taking into account options was $36 million. Generally, equity stake of bank CEO was worth more than ten times his compensation in 2006.

　　The results show that there is no evidence prove that banks led by CEO whose interests better alignment with those of their shareholders had higher stock returns during the crisis and some evidence show that banks with better aligned of CEO interest with those of their shareholders had a worse return on equity and stock returns. Specifically, whether the sample includes investment banks or not, stock return and accounting equity return performance are negatively related to bank CEOs dollar incentives, measured as the dollar change in a CEOs wealth for a 1% change in the stock price. This effect is clear and is not explained by a few banks where CEOs had extremely high ownership. An increase of one standard deviation in dollar ownership associated with lower returns of 10.2%. Similarly, a bank’s return on equity in 2008 is negatively related to its CEO’s holdings of shares in 2006 – a one standard deviation increase in dollar ownership associated with about a 10.1% lower return on equity. Though options have blamed for leading to excessive risk-taking, there is no evidence in our sample that greater sensitivity of CEO pay to stock volatility led to worse stock returns during the credit crisis. Further, option compensation did not have influence on bank performance during the crisis.

　　A plausible explanation for these findings is that CEOs focused on the interests of their shareholders in the build-up to the crisis and took actions that they believed the market would welcome. Ex post, these actions were costly to their banks and to themselves when they produced poor results. These poor results were not expected by the CEOs to the extent that they did not cut their holdings of shares anticipation of the crisis or during the crisis. Furthermore, there is no evidence that they hedged their equity exposure. Consequently, they suffered extremely large wealth losses as a result of the crisis because they typically did not sell shares.

　　This shows that bank CEOs had very high incentives to maximize shareholder wealth. This evidence makes it implausible that the credit crisis can blamed on misalignment of incentives between CEOs and shareholders. While misaligned incentives play a dominant role in the minds of economists, it has appealed as this narrative might be in explaining the financial crisis of 2007 - 2008 ,which best it was a supportive not primary.

　　When the bank CEOs and non-bank CEOs compared, bank CEOs receive less salary, fewer stock options and have a smaller part of their total pay coming from stock options and stock holdings. These results contradict the idea that compensation packages in the banking industry offer incentives for risk taking (Micheal, Walter and Williams, 2008).

　　On the one hand, the role of incentives perceived to play a crucial if not the major causal role. Besides that, there is many causes in credit crisis. Though overall bank performance from July 2007 to December 2008 was the worst since the Great Depression, there is significant variation in the cross-section of stock returns of large banks across the world during that period (Beltratti & Stulz, 2012).

　　Since the US sub-prime problems , one major US institution – Lehman Brothers – has gone bankrupt, and other key mortgage providers in both the USA (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) and UK (Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley) have become dependent upon central government support for their survival.

　　According to Brunnermeier (2009) stated that as the price index declines, the cost of insuring a basket of mortgages of a certain rating against default increases. Investor in subprime mortgage-backed securities would have demanded higher returns and greater capital cushions. Which resulted borrowers would not have found credit as cheap or as easy to get as it became during subprime credit boom.Subprime borrowers typically have weakened credit histories and reduced repayment capacity. Subprime loans have a higher risk of default than loans to prime borrowers. If a borrower is delinquent in making timely mortgage payments to the loan servicers (a bank or other financial firm), the lender may take possession of the property, in a process called foreclosure. Consumer spending is down, the housing market has plummeted, foreclosure numbers continue to rise and the stock market has shaken. The subprime crisis and resulting foreclosure fallout has caused dissension among consumers, lenders and legislators and spawned furious debate over the causes and possible fixes of the “mess.”

　　There is several reason what led to mortgage. Many experts and economics profession believe it came about though combination of a several factors in which subprime lending played a major part and resulted in credit crisis.

　　Holt (2009) stated that the general consensus is that the primary cause of the current recession was the credit crisis arising from the bursting of the housing bubble. Numerous commentators have weighed in on the causes of the housing bubble and the resulting credit crisis. A housing bubble is an economic bubble that occurs in local or global real estate markets. It defined by rapid increases in the valuations of real property until unsustainable levels reached with incomes and other indicators of affordability. Following the rapid increases are decreases in home prices and mortgage debt that is higher than the value of the property.

　　Many economists believe that the U.S. housing bubble caused in part by historically low-interest rates. Low interest rates and large inflows of foreign funds created easy credit conditions for a several years before the crisis, fueling a housing market boom and encouraging debt-financed consumption. Subprime lending was a major contributor to this increase in home ownership rates and in the overall demand for housing, which drove prices higher. Speculative borrowing in residential real estate has cited as a contributing reason to the subprime mortgage crisis. In answer to a question about the causes of the subprime crisis, Greenspan said that it was more an issue of house prices than mortgage credit.

　　Johnson and Neave (2008) state that essentially, we attribute the difficulties in the subprime market to an evolving mismatch between loan quality, as measured by default risk, and the loans' governance as measured by the joint risk control capabilities of lenders and investors. The difficulties have compounded by the use of collateral debt obligations (CDOs) with varying exposure to the default risks and the further use of default insurance.

　　Default insurance on the mortgage portfolio meant that neither the original lenders nor institutional investors faced strong incentives to check the default risks. At the same time, some insurers eager for business under-priced the default insurance they sold.

　　Dowd , et al., (2009) comments that the key reason in the credit is liquidity in the market for sub-prime mortgage based CMOs due to increasing uncertainty about the value of the underlying collateral. The value of a bond purchased from a CDO or CMO is usually model based, and dependent upon a set of assumptions about the risk of the underlying collateral, but such assumptions are both subjective and uncertain. Most importantly, the perceived risk at the time of buying of such bonds may change over time, leading to a change in their value.

　　Finally, I am disagree with bank CEO incentives were a major causes in credit crisis. Since, it is entirely fair to argue that these tests are not decisive. But still, the evidence is not there, at least not yet, that bank CEO incentives were a major reason in credit crisis. As I already find some journal and other evidence to prove that, what I end there will be many causes combine together and result in credit crisis. I find that bank CEO incentive were only one of the causes in credit crisis. Because there is no any journal or evidence to prove it is a major reason and I find that the rises in credit crisis which combination of other causes.