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Overcoming Cognitive Friction to Engineer Better Software The problems customers face are difficult to anticipate while developing software. However, looking at support issues can give a clearer idea about how to look for defects in the future. Sometimes users don’t know how to find certain information; other times, software doesn’t work as expected. In both cases, cognitive friction is at play.
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Usability and User Experience: A Usable Explanation "User experience" and "usability" are often used synonymously, but they are actually different concepts. This article examines both terms and explains the components of each, investigating what contributes to a "good user experience," the different ways that can be judged, and how designers can attempt to achieve it.
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Why Selenium Should Be Your UI Test Tool Selecting a testing tool is hard work. If you look on vendor websites, you'll get marketing material promising the world. If you look on forums, you'll mostly get people trying to solve their own problems. Justin Rohrman tells you why you might choose Selenium as your UI testing tool, based on real experience with real software projects—rather than a marketing page.
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ADC West 2015 Keynote: Lean UX: Turn User Experience Design Inside Out When developing products, features, and enhancements, you have to have your customers’ best interests at heart. “We’re not just creating software,” speaker Jeff Patton said. “We’re changing the world.” You need to better understand the people you’re building things for, and the only way to do that is to spend more time with them.
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Using Load Testing Tools for More Than Just Load Testing System load testing tools are well known for understanding how your system will perform under different scenarios—but that is not all these tools can do. This article looks at the ability to gain critical information from your production systems using the abilities that are included in these tools.
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Crowdsourced Testing Lets Your Apps “Go Wild” It simply isn’t feasible to test every possible user scenario with a new app, and the testers who already know how the app should perform can't approach using it the same way as someone unfamiliar with the process. Enter crowdsourced testing, where you gather a customizable pool of people from outside your organization to test your apps for defects and usability.
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Managing Acceptance Criteria Plans Some of the hardest and most crucial instances in any project execution are the user acceptance test phases. But having a thorough and clearly documented process for evaluating acceptance and exit criteria that you previously agreed on with the end-user will help you handle expectations and plan on results.
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I Go Back: Valuable Lessons in Quality Engineering Terry Wiegmann noticed that in certain conversations with clients and team members, a single phrase can take her back to some “aha” moments when she grasped fundamental quality concepts. She shares some of these major learning moments throughout her career and how they can apply to quality engineering.
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Using Your Own Crowd for Crowdsourced Testing A company used crowdsourced testing as part of the testing process when redesigning its website. This testing employed internal resources to achieve the benefits of crowdsourced testing at a greatly reduced cost and provided the added benefit of getting company employees used to the new site. Read on for a review of the process.
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The Future of System Maintenance The role of the tester has changed significantly over the years. Allow your mind to wander and think about how it might continue to change. Imagine a world with increased transparency for code changes and more visibility of details. What could the future of system maintenance look like?
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