I've been using piazza for two and a half years now, while it is a great tool for learning there has been one feature which they have that drives me insane every new semester.
I have no idea what the website designer was thinking when they made it so that whenever you add a new class they automatically subscribe you to a reading "smart digest." This means that per a class every 4 hours if there was a post then it will email you an update. Although this might be a great feature for some people who are super extremely keen for their classes, to the majority of people it's a huge hassle.
This is a great example of a developer trying to force a feature onto its users without careful consideration. When I was first using piazza, after about a weeks my email was filled will a bunch of junk notifications from piazza that I did not care about. It about two weeks before someone cared enough to make a post about how to change the email settings in piazza. The main problem I have with this feature is not how its implemented but its how its forced onto the users and actually detracts from the overall experience instead of enhancing it.
This weekend I went to Queens University to attend a hackathon, and one of the sponsors of the hackathon caught my eye, Flipp.
I cannot remember the last time I have seen someone use a flyer. I thought of the paper-based advertisement as a relic until I saw Flipp and I came to the realization that even though technology gets outdated, the niche which is filled by that technology was filled for a reason. In this weeks lecture, we talked about how whenever we use something, we hire it for a job. There was a "job" opening which Flipp got hired for. Flipp modernized the flyer and gave an old dog some decent new tricks. Turns out having hundreds of flyers and being able to compare prices between competitors is pretty useful. The old paper-base delivery of flyers cannot keep up in the modern age. It seems like nowadays there is a standard for everything to be done instantly, fast and efficiently. Anything that does not meet that standard is old news, and forgotten about even if they filled an useful niche.
I have no idea what the website designer was thinking when they made it so that whenever you add a new class they automatically subscribe you to a reading "smart digest." This means that per a class every 4 hours if there was a post then it will email you an update. Although this might be a great feature for some people who are super extremely keen for their classes, to the majority of people it's a huge hassle.
This is a great example of a developer trying to force a feature onto its users without careful consideration. When I was first using piazza, after about a weeks my email was filled will a bunch of junk notifications from piazza that I did not care about. It about two weeks before someone cared enough to make a post about how to change the email settings in piazza. The main problem I have with this feature is not how its implemented but its how its forced onto the users and actually detracts from the overall experience instead of enhancing it.
This weekend I went to Queens University to attend a hackathon, and one of the sponsors of the hackathon caught my eye, Flipp.
I cannot remember the last time I have seen someone use a flyer. I thought of the paper-based advertisement as a relic until I saw Flipp and I came to the realization that even though technology gets outdated, the niche which is filled by that technology was filled for a reason. In this weeks lecture, we talked about how whenever we use something, we hire it for a job. There was a "job" opening which Flipp got hired for. Flipp modernized the flyer and gave an old dog some decent new tricks. Turns out having hundreds of flyers and being able to compare prices between competitors is pretty useful. The old paper-base delivery of flyers cannot keep up in the modern age. It seems like nowadays there is a standard for everything to be done instantly, fast and efficiently. Anything that does not meet that standard is old news, and forgotten about even if they filled an useful niche.
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