Speaking at CAST 2014 & The Saturday Night Project

Over last 2 years, I have done crazy things. I attended a Design conference, Developer conference, Story Telling workshop by well known Brand Expert and Master Storyteller Ameen Haque, took a design course tutored by Don Norman on 'The Design Of Everyday Things' and also took up some singing classes with my daughter (Oh! I just bray!). I also did several things at work that I have not done before. All along, I went with the flow, picked up any challenge that appeared exciting and enjoyed what I did.

The Saturday Night Project

I spent more than an year studying design and user experience between 2013 and 2014. I was amused by what User Experience Design field had to offer when I led a User Experience testing project at my previous job. The experience has been exhilarating. I learned about design, about applying design concepts to testing and about life itself. All this, happened on saturday nights after I put my kids to sleep. It's been a wonderful journey. These learnings are very special because a lot of effort went into it.

It's time I share these learnings with the world. Which better conference than at CAST 2014!

CAST 2014

CAST is a very special conference for me (apart from Let's Test and Bug DeBug). I have several friends who have attended this conference and told me that I MUST attend this conference, even if it is at my own expenses. Two years ago, I told myself that someday I will present at CAST. My dream is coming true this year. My family thinks I am crazy to be spending a bomb on this trip. For me, it's worth my time, effort and money for the wonderful testers I am going to meet at this conference. I am excited about this conference.

I am presenting a paper "Testing Lessons From The Design Thinking World" at CAST 2014 at New York. You can check out my Abstract HERE.

Date :: 12th August 2014, 4.50 PM
Venue :: KC909, Kimmel Center, New York

Key Highlights of My CAST Talk
Emotions Testing
Multi-Sensory Experience
Testing for Errors
Customer Touch Points

Trailer of My CAST Talk
CAST 2014 Team (Lalit Bhramare and Ben Yaroch) helped set up a video trailer of my talk which is a sneak preview into what I am going to talk about in my session. Watch it below.

Token of Thanks

I would like to thank scores of my friends and colleagues who helped me in this journey. The first and foremost in the list is my teacher and colleague Pradeep Soundararajan without whose push, I would have not gotten till here in my UXD study. I would also like to thank Dhanasekar Subramaniam, Bhavana, Ravisuriya, Dheeraj Karanam and David Greenlees who kept sending me information about related topics/articles for several months in a row. I would also like to thank all my team members who have supported me in my search for UXD Nirvana :)

Special Thanks to James Bach, David Greenlees and Lee Copeland for agreeing to review my slide deck and providing their valuable feedback. Without these people's inputs, my talk would not have been what it is right now.

I would also like to thank Don Norman, Jason Pollard, Rob Sabourin (Testing Lessons series) whose work inspired me a lot in last one year.

What Next?

Come to my session on 12th Aug 2014 at KC909 at 4.50 PM

See you there!

You can't make it? Don't lose heart! Watch CAST 2014 Live HERE

Regards,
Pari

Testing for Errors

This article was originally published on passbrains blog HERE.

Great designs transform the way we live and we all act as designers in our own simple ways. When we rearrange objects on our desks, the furniture in our living rooms, and the things we keep in our cars, we are designing. Through our designs, we transform houses into homes, spaces into places and things into belongings. While we may not have any control over the design of the many objects we purchase, we do control what we choose to purchase.

Faulty Designs

A year ago, at least 40 people were killed in a tragic accident involving a private Volvo bus on the Bangalore-Hyderabad National Highway. The incident happened when the bus was reportedly trying to overtake a vehicle at high speed and hit a culvert and caught fire. Before the passengers could realize what had happened, they were charred to death. Investigations revealed that this accident was a result of poor design and absence of safety measures in the bus.

Faulty Designs

The point here is that design can play a key role in making or breaking products. Volvo bus was never designed to hit the culverts nor was it tested for that. However, the driver ended up hitting the culvert. If faulty designs are not tested in multiple contexts like these, it can wreak havoc. Faulty designs are a result of inaccurate mental models perceived by designers and users contrary to system images of products that exist in real. Let’s take a brief look at what mental models are and how they can help us in creating better designs that handle error situations effectively. 

Mental Models

A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences. Mental models can help shape behaviour and set an approach to solving problems (akin to a personal algorithm) and doing tasks (from Wikipedia).

Mental Models

According to Don Norman, there are three aspects to mental models:

• Designer’s model: The model present in a designer’s mind
• User’s model: The model a user develops when he sees/attempts to operate the system
• System image: The way a system operates, the way it responds, manuals, instructions etc.

Every designer builds a model of the system or product while the user will have a mental model of his own. Any inconsistencies in these models lead to errors. But errors should be easy to detect, they should have minimal consequences, and if possible, their effects should be reversible.

Testing for Errors

While speaking, we can correct ourselves if we stumble or mess up. Products and systems often do not correct themselves because they are only as intelligent as the people who built them. This leads to “slip” which is the most common error – when we intend to do one thing and accidentally do another.

Well-designed products allow us to detect slips through feedbacks. For example, in a delete operation, it is good to ask for a confirmation to verify if the user wants to proceed. If that operation is irrevocable, it is better to warn him of the consequence and take his consent. A general heuristic is to never take away control from the user.

Recoverability of errors is a key aspect in designing products. When errors do occur, the following should happen:

• Give visibility to the user of what was done
• Do/Show/Tell the user what went wrong
• Indicate how the user can reverse unwanted outcome
• If reversibility is not possible, indicate this to the user

  

Error Messages Coverage

Error messages coverage can be achieved at multiple levels:

Errors-based Scenarios Testing

Testers could get a list of all error messages programmed into the product and design scenarios for each and every error message

Negative Testing 

Negative testing is not the same as error messages testing. In error messages testing you start with known error handling and test it. This is essentially "positive" testing for error handling code. In negative testing, however, you think differently. Negative testing means to "negate" required conditions. In other words, you consider all the things that the programmer/designer requires for his code, then systematically block those conditions. Example: the program needs memory, so reduce memory

Recoverability Testing Matrix

Every error message needs to be tested for Recoverability. 

• Visibility to the user of what was done
• Do/Show/Tell them what went wrong
• How the user can reverse unwanted outcome
• If reversibility is not possible, indicate to the user what needs to be done next

Some Examples

Failure Usability Heuristic by Ben Simo

Error Elimination Testing by David Greenlees

Feedback Parser by Santhosh Tuppad

** This article is inspired by Don Norman’s book “The Design of Everyday Things”

** Negative testing input was provided by James Bach

Regards,

Pari