Mobile App Design Risk Assessment & Management 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A mobile app is designed only for iOS 16 and above. As older devices become more prevalent among target users, this creates which type of risk?
- Platform fragmentation risk (Correct answer)
- Data loss risk
- Regulatory risk
- Monetization risk
Correct answer: Platform fragmentation risk
Platform fragmentation risk occurs when supporting only specific OS versions excludes a significant portion of the target user base on older devices.
Question 2: Which technique involves systematically identifying risks by examining what could go wrong at each step of a process or user flow?
- A/B testing
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) (Correct answer)
- Cohort analysis
- Regression testing
Correct answer: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
FMEA is a structured method for identifying potential failure modes in a process, their causes, and their effects on the system.
Question 3: An app team decides to purchase cyber liability insurance to cover costs of a potential data breach. This risk strategy is called:
- Risk avoidance
- Risk reduction
- Risk transfer (Correct answer)
- Risk acceptance
Correct answer: Risk transfer
Risk transfer shifts the financial consequences of a risk to a third party, such as an insurance provider, rather than absorbing the loss internally.
Question 4: A social app launches just before a competitor releases a nearly identical product with more funding. This represents which risk that should have been assessed earlier?
- Technical debt risk
- Competitive market risk (Correct answer)
- User churn risk
- Regulatory compliance risk
Correct answer: Competitive market risk
Competitive market risk is the threat that a competitor's product will undermine your app's market position, adoption, or revenue.
Question 5: When should risk assessment ideally begin in the mobile app design lifecycle?
- During beta testing
- After the first release to production
- In the discovery and planning phase (Correct answer)
- Only when a problem is reported by users
Correct answer: In the discovery and planning phase
Risk assessment should begin in the discovery and planning phase so that risks can be addressed in design decisions before development begins.
Question 6: A healthcare app collects patient data. New HIPAA guidance requires changes to data handling that weren't anticipated. This is an example of:
- Technical risk
- Regulatory/compliance risk (Correct answer)
- Operational risk
- User experience risk
Correct answer: Regulatory/compliance risk
Regulatory or compliance risk arises when laws, standards, or guidelines change in ways that require costly modifications to the app's data handling.
Question 7: Which risk assessment approach assigns numerical values to risks to enable quantitative comparison and prioritization?
- Qualitative risk analysis
- Quantitative risk analysis (Correct answer)
- Heuristic evaluation
- Delphi method only
Correct answer: Quantitative risk analysis
Quantitative risk analysis uses numerical data and statistical methods to assign measurable values to risks, enabling objective comparison.
Mobile App Design Risk Assessment & Management 3
A mobile app is designed only for iOS 16 and above.
As older devices become more prevalent among target users, this creates which type of risk?