14 October, 2009

Painting the Right Picture

I read an article about New York city police officers attending a training on The Art of Perception. I have been very bad in understanding and interpreting works of art. I prefer to sit up and listen to a story instead. Being a science student, reading psychology books during my college days has helped me a great deal to understand the emotions of people, products, interactions, arguments, debates and many more. This experience also encouraged me to read diverse stuff, not just on testing. The above article forced me to think if I was sidelining a few attributes that would benefit the tester in me by not studying art.It was high time for me to re-think about my attitude on works of art.

While I was thinking about this whole thing, Marlena Compton posed a challenge on her recent blog post titled Visionary Testing – When Blogs Collide. I wished to take it up and try it out for myself. I have admired Raja Ravi Varma’s artwork all along my childhood. I chose the Lady with Lamp for my study.

My mind drew blank at the first glimpse of the portrait. I could not think anything about the portrait except that the lady in the portrait was yelling at me ‘Don’t you see what I am doing?, you nut!’. I took a couple more minutes to observe some attributes of the portrait. I have written my observations in two parts below: What I saw in the portrait and What I inferred from it.

What I saw?
The lady gives a strange yet polite stare while holding the lamp.

What I inferred?
There is a very high level of clarity and loads of confidence brimming in her eyes while she holds the lamp. She seems to know what she is doing, Why she is doing and How she is doing.


What I saw?
She is holding the stem of the lamp with her left hand as if with clinched fist.

What I inferred?
The way in which she is holding the stem of the lamp displays her determination to hold the lamp upright to avoid spilling the oil in the lamp. This also conveys that this lamp is made up of a copper/brass/iron or any other metal which is not only hard to hold, but also very heavy. Hence she has held it tight so it does not slip out of her hand.


What I saw?
She has held her right hand close to the flame.

What I inferred?
She does not want the flame to get blown away. Hence she is covering her right hand to avoid the wind/breeze from blowing the flame off. I also infer that there is a window/a door or a few windows/doors which are opened at this point in the room where she is standing right now. There is lot of wind/breeze flowing into the room that can put off the flame.


What I saw?
The lamp and the flame appear very close to her body.

What I inferred?
It appears like she has held the lamp very close to her body which in turn means that the flame can possibly burn her saree. However, there is a certain distance between the flame and her body which is concealed in the picture.


What I saw?
There is a large shadow behind her.

What I inferred?
This means that she is in a relatively dark room. This also means that the room is lit up from the light that is coming from the lamp and no other source of light. This has resulted in a large shadow behind her while she holds the lamp.


What I saw?
The veil on her head is partially covering her head.

What I inferred?
The veil on her head to me means that she belongs to a slightly conservative family where woman are expected to cover their faces with veil (which is typically one loose end of the saree) in front of other men and elderly people in the family. The partially covered veil means that she is alone in this room at this point.


What I saw?
The loose end of the saree on her left side appears wavy.

What I inferred?
There is a lot of breeze flowing into the room making the saree appear wavy.



Now what’s this got to do with the tester in me?
1. The Big Picture heuristic – Big picture looks too scary. Break it into smaller chunks. You will be able to see smaller parts of the big picture which makes the big picture clearer.

2. Observation – Having an eye for detail is a great attribute for a tester. If I do not observe the intricate details, I cannot figure out smaller attributes in the portrait! Good observation skills help identify the nitty gritties and boosts our imagination of the context of the portrait.

3. Perception – Perception is becoming aware of something via the senses. My perception of the portrait may be similar or drastically different from yours . This could be because we are different people having different perspectives and coming from different cultural backgrounds. To perceive what is exactly in the portrait is a challenge and that comes with studying more portraits.

4. Interpretation – Interpretation is a mental representation of something. Interpretation needs a deeper knowledge of the portrait and the context in which it was designed.

5. Investigation – What is the background into the portrait? Why is the portrait painted in a certain way? Why is the lady staring and not smiling? Investigate when all is well and investigate even when all is not well. Do you smell something fishy? Wow. you are on track!

Products are just like paintings. Unclear(Why is the product built this way?), Little or no background (Lack of Requirements), Difficult to Understand (What does it do, Why does it do and How does it do?), Difficult to convince people to buy (customizing the product to suit the needs of the customer). Well the customer asked for a soap and we jazz up a match box like a soap box. And the customer asks 'Nice box, but where is the soap?' .

At the end of this exercise, I felt amazing. Wow. I can study a portrait too. Atleast my first attempt looked decent enough. I am so glad I pushed myself to study a work of art and analyse it. I am sure to be respecting artists and works of art a lot more now.

Can you paint the right picture of the product in your mind?

Happy Painting,
Parimala Shankaraiah
http://curioustester.blogspot.com

10 comments:

  1. wow... so much can be inferred from a painting! Yes, that is a very good study on how to explore more from a given product. People will have a different set of reasoning based on their cultural background and the way they have been bought up. It also spills some light on getting used to the product by acquiring some knowledge about the users of it... I can very well see a link to Globalization (i18n+l10n).

    Wow. thanks for sharing this. I am going to use it as a subject for one of my post in the near future :)

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  2. @Mohan

    Glad to know that you see a link to Globalization. It would be good to elaborate on it here or on your blog.

    Thanks,
    Parimala Shankaraiah

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  3. I think this article presents an excellent perspective! Apart from your apt inference, one of the key take-aways here is no matter how complex a problem may look at a first glance-one of the better ways to solve it is to break it up in manageable parts.
    Simplification is the key!

    Regards,
    Anuj
    http://anujmagazine.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  4. @Anuj
    Simplification is the key!


    Yes! Simplification is the key. Until recently, I saw every testing task as a huge chunk and became ineffective because of the complex it gave me. Breaking it into smaller chunks has helped me get more confident to learn and understand complex things. Thanks to Session Based Test Management approach which helped me realise the simplified approach to everything.

    Thanks,
    Parimala Shankaraiah

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  5. Hi Pari!

    So simple and so briliant. doin' this excersize is a great way to practice the system generalist thinking type. I took a note to try it myself.

    Keep goin' with more refreshing ideas.

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  6. @Issi
    Do let me know how you did this exercise after you are done.

    Thanks,
    Parimala Shankaraiah

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  7. (replying to your reply from my last comment)
    Sure - see my Exercise lab notes (and few more thoughts): http://testermindset.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  8. Pari,

    Another good post :)

    I thought about a couple of other inferences -

    1. the lady in picture might be from reasonably wealthy family, her ornaments shows that. Also the make of the vessel copper/brass is a pointer to this :)

    2. there is an expectation in her eyes, so she might be giving "light" to her beloved/father/some one close to her. :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. @Nandagopal
    Another good post :)


    Thank You.

    1. the lady in picture might be from reasonably wealthy family, her ornaments shows that. Also the make of the vessel copper/brass is a pointer to this :)

    2. there is an expectation in her eyes, so she might be giving "light" to her beloved/father/some one close to her. :)


    Good attempt at the inferences. Try afresh with a different portrait of your liking. I have experienced that when I tried to do something on my own without reading others' opinions, I got a lot more ideas. Agreed that they may or may not be great. Still, I got them on my own and there is scope to improve.

    It is the same with test ideas. If you have already read some test ideas for testing a notepad, your mind is programmed to look in similar areas. But if you think afresh, then that is the real YOU approaching the test ideas in your typical stye. This is just my take.

    Thanks,
    Parimala Shankaraiah

    ReplyDelete
  10. Nice Post Mam, good mindset by comparing art and product. Feel, great to read this post, learnt, to think the ability of power.

    ReplyDelete