Post #2 - Web/Mobile App Critique.

 

    The web app I want to write about is a former book publishing website that has, over time, transformed into a training website found at https://www.oreilly.com. The O’reilly series of books were top-rated several years ago when purchasing a hard copy of a book was a regular occurrence. They were famous for deep diving into specific topics. Their softcover format was also unique and simple but of high quality, primarily white, with some areas shaded in Navy blue and some animal on the cover. Over time they modified the covers somewhat, but the essence remained the same, very simple and completely different from any other publisher’s books.

    With the proliferation of electronic copies of books, slowly, the preference and cost of producing their books have forced them to move away from printed copies largely. Also, because technology changes so fast, printed books can become obsolete readings quickly before publishers can recover their investment, hence the reason for the evolution of the site from a publisher’s site to a training site. It is a subscription-based training site somewhat different from others; other sites, such as LinkedIn Learning and Pluralsight, provide video training for a monthly subscription fee, while others, like Udemy, have a more open option to purchase a training course rather than a monthly subscription. They all offer training videos or what used to be known as CBT (Computer-Based Training).

                                                       

     The advantage of https://learning.oreilly.com is that for a monthly subscription of about $50 you can find different types of training materials, the majority being books, and the best part is that they not only have the books they publish but have books from many other publishers. I rarely look for a topic, of course, a technical topic, without getting at least ten book results, some of them are a few years old, and many are very much current. They also have video courses, not as many as books or other sites previously mentioned. Still, their video courses tend to be with a live person and some animation rather than being one hundred percent animated, and topics covered range from beginners to advanced. But the other type of media they provide is what makes them a disruptor in this online training space; they have routinely scheduled webinars and live training sessions with many well-known authors and reputable people in the IT industry on a wide range of topics.

    Some improvements could be made to this website once you log in; although minor, they can go a long way in making their site better and a little more user-friendly.  Searching for a topic, as my example shows, “CISSP,” provided a list of 1,362 results, and I can list up to one hundred entries per page. I can sort by Topics, Publishers, Rating, and Publication Date, but I cannot sort by content type, so I cannot display video training or books only; it is all or nothing unless I specifically know who the video training publisher is. Instead, I have to scroll through the results list to find the media I am interested in.

 

    Other recommendations I would make to the search result list are to allow the ability to show more than one hundred items per page and the ability to change how they are displayed. Currently, the maximum per page is one hundred entries. Still, if they display format could be changed to show only text without the book cover or training, more items could be displayed per page, helping to reduce the search significantly.