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Examity's Garbage Software Is Failing Its Partners

I was helping a friend install the "Examity SB" software for proctored exam taking. What a mess! I'm not complaining about the concept of the proctored online examines. It is the quality of Examity's client software implementation and associated process that is nothing short of an embarrassment. Examity's software and process design flaws can turn the test-taking process from "stressful" to "idiotic nightmare". "Examity SB" is one of the worst "professional", publicly distributed software packages I've seen in years.

A Rant for the Ages.

Adobe Flash? Please!

First, Examity's website suggested that I download and install the obsolete Adobe Flash software system. Since Adobe Flash is dangerous from a computer security perspective and unavailable, I decided to download the native SB application. Just as a data point, my organization decided to sunset our use of Adobe Flash for user-facing pedagogical software development in 2008. Here we are, more than a decade later, and Examity is suggesting the use of Flash. Ug.

Unsigned Software

The downloaded Examity SB application is an unsigned 180 MB package. Being unsigned, users need to give the software special permission. SB fails to inform the user how it is modifying their computer's configuration. If and when thing don't go the way the SB software expects, SB sloppily spits out useless error messages boxes like "Press Run to run this Script or Quit", or "fix me". And every action from there seems to fail.

Such poor software was unacceptable in 1995, and it continues to be unacceptable today. Examity's software is fixable, but only if Examity properly manages the software development process.

Examity's partners (those people offering exams) must start considering how Examity's poor software implementation negatively represents their business. The fact that Examity's partners accepts Examity's poor user-facing software shows that the proctored on-line exam market is ripe for competition.

Untestable after Installation

Now it is installed, let's fire it up to make sure it works. Right? After all, you don't want to show up to an exam and find out in the heat of the moment that the software has a problem.

Nope! Examity can not function at all before the exam. If you try it, it doesn't even display a useful warning or error message. It just kind of dumps. There is simply no way for the user to validate that the software works until exam time. The reasoning? None given.

Update: Examity Fails the Exam.

As predicted, my friend's Examity-centric exam process failed due to hidden problems with the software installation. It likely had something to do with the idea that my friend is a professional and was using her IT managed office computer, and Examity simply couldn't cope or provide useful self-diagnotics.

Without a proper way for customers to validate the operation of the software before exam time, hours of time can be lost. Idiotic.

Due to Examity's failure, she needed to reschedule the exam using a borrowed a laptop that had a brand new OS install. Not everyone is so lucky. She killed it, with thanks to her privilege of time to reschedule and deep tech resources. And no thanks to Examity.

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