Evaluation of the Best and Worst Digital Products

In my opinion, a digital products' success is defined by the amount of convenience it provides to its users, and how accessible and easy-to-use the service is. For this reason, www.weather.com, is my favorite digital product, and probably the best one I use. www.weather.com is a website that provides information about weather for various locations. It is straightforward and easy to navigate through the website. Locations are determined by zip codes. Once the website receives this information, it returns to the user with a 5 day overview of temperate and weather. Next, the user can choose between 10-day forecast, hourly temperature and weather conditions, next-day weather conditions, and map/satellite views. This allows to user to pick what they want to look at, and provides detail accordingly. The amount of detail, when requested, that the site provides, is incredible. If there is going to be rain, for example, it gives a %chance of rain for each hour of the day, with charts for extra information. It is very accessible because it is a website, and will work on any device with Internet connection, and is also available in an “app” form. It is convenient, and does make my daily life easier, so in my opinion, it is successful.

Conversely, Blackboard, in my opinion, is not a good digital product. Blackboard is used by several colleges, including The New School, as a platform for professors to relay information such as assignments, readings, and other information to students. Each class has a separate folder, and subfolders can be made within each class folder. Blackboard itself, as a program, is extremely low. It is also inconsistent as it works better/worse on different Internet platforms (safari, firefox, etc.). This inconsistently is frustrating when trying to access blackboard from different devices. Blackboard also has times when they service their website, and thus it is not possible to access the site at these times. In these situations, blackboard should inform their users via e-mail, informing them about the inconvenience. There are several pain points with blackboard, which makes it an unsuccessful  and bad digital product.