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aclairefication

~ using my evil powers for good

Monthly Archives: January 2014

Potty training

29 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Experiences, Experiments, Protip, Soft Skills, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Testing Games, Training

≈ 1 Comment

STC ATL Dec 2013 MeetupMy first experience with testing games was back at my first testing conference when Michael Bolton gave me a testing challenge at lunch: a rubber ball. I didn’t know what I was getting into, but I knew I loved games. And that is a key aspect of how games help us to learn: getting past our resistance by promising us fun. Since software testing is a complex mental activity, exercising our minds is an important part of improving our work.

After attending several testing conferences, I can safely say one of my favorite aspects of these gatherings is evenings filed with testing games. (That is, games for testers, not testing video games.) Whether you’re rolling the dice (more, spoilers), deducing when a pen is not a pen, building a tower of pyramids, or shouting out “Set!” as you casually wander past, testers love a challenge.

So it was no surprise that John had his game bag already on the table when I arrived for the STC ATL holiday meetup. What I didn’t expect was Disruptus, a new-to-me game. He explained for a few minutes and then we jumped right in to playing. Almost immediately, I flipped over a card with an image of a toilet and the improve card:

Add or change 1 or more elements depicted in the card to improve the object or idea.

TMI

Skip this TMI stuff!

Since we are currently potty training at our house, this was a particularly relevant subject for me. I started rattling off ideas as they came to mind. John stopped me and said that I wasn’t coming up with new ideas but instead listing things that had already been done. While I agreed, I found that saying each of the knowns out loud helped me to clear my head for the next idea to come along.

Ideas that sprang to mind:

You know, for kids

    • toilet seat lock for babies just learning to walk
    • toddler height toilet
    • step stool for standing toilet training (boys)
    • separate lightweight plastic toddler toilet – could be portable
    • folding travel toilet seat for toddler on-the-go
    • built-in potty seat for toddler years that is easily removed for cleaning
    • moveable toddler handled seat for better balance
    • splash guard for boys potty training
    • tiny plastic urinal – I’d seen one once at a kids consignment sale
    • toilet target for potty training boys
    • soft-close lid that doesn’t slam down on little fingers
    • tie-in to children’s book/video for better motivating child (i.e. matches picture) – with audio/musical accompaniment for better motivating child
    • toilet with book rack attachment – also good for adults!
    • tie-in to popular children’s character for better motivating child
    • And of course Pinterest is awash in toilet training ideas…

Adult toilets

    • Dune’s Fremen stillsuit (okay, so that’s not real…)
    • water-conserving toilets – high efficiency, multi-flush options
    • recycling water from washing hands for next flush
    • elevated tank to use gravity for flushing
    • recently read an article about posture and advantage of raising feet using step-stool
    • bidet attachment that I saw at a co-working space
    • soft seat vs. hard seat
    • toilet scent spray that a friend mentioned to me & has ridiculous commercial
    • elongated seat
    • elevated seat for elderly with limited range of motion – vs. seat riser/handles
    • foot pedal to raise/lower the lid without using hands
    • putting the seat back down in the first place
    • self-cleaning – or at least those tablet attachments
    • germ resistant surface
    • I’d once seen a toilet with an automated toilet-seat-cover replacement system
    • I’d seen more exotic toilet options in a local farmer’s market store
    • a friend explained the composting toilet to me
    • chemical toilet/waterless toilet for big events like outdoor concerts
    • urinals – I’d seen a public outdoor urinal in Amsterdam that was just two large crosspieces for minimal privacy
    • device allowing women to stand for urination – thanks, Twitter!
    • chamberpots
    • outhouses
Things I’d never heard of
    • Glow-in-the-dark toilet seat – this would be a big hit with the kids!
    • Squat toilets
    • proximity sensor
    • toilet seat warmer – including power saving mode!
    • electric lifting seats for the elderly
    • female urinal
    • sound cloaking
    • toilet slippers
    • pretty much anything shown in Cars 2 when Mater visits the restroom

Motivation

Of course, it wasn’t until much later (esprit d’escalier) that the thing I really wanted to improve came to mind: I hate toilet auto-flush algorithms. As a happy user of toilet seat covers in public restrooms, I always feel concern about whether I’ll have to contend with a particularly sensitive hands-free toilet. Despite my years of experience, I have not yet mastered the art of evading the motion sensor while placing the toilet seat cover.

I would love to rewrite the algorithm to some set pattern of motions that would distinguish between someone leaning toward the seat to place a liner – and so avoid germs – and someone leaving the stall having completed her errand. Even clap-on, clap-off would be preferable to spray in the face from an unexpected flush.

Protip : My husband takes a 2 foot length of toilet paper and blindfolds the sensor. Manual flush never felt so good.

Training through play

So now that you made it past TMI, let’s get back to the notion of testing games for training testers. Do testing games help testers learn how to test? Many testers are making an argument for this.

John Stevenson is one of them. He uses Disruptus to encourage disruptive thinking that leads to innovation – in testing. Create, Improve, Transform, Disrupt: these 4 approaches are important when designing and executing tests. Finding new ways to remix our tests helps us to focus on things that matter but to approach them in a new way, extending our coverage of various paths and potential usage patterns. My experience with only a few turns of this game left me invigorated and encouraged to try new things at work.

How have you used games to learn about testing?

Sketching for fun and profit

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Agile2013, Approaches, Experiences, Experiments, Soft Skills, Speaking, Training, User Experience, Visualization

≈ 1 Comment

Have at you

As I recently wrote in Better Software magazine, I tend toward visualizing information. While this does not mean I skimp on words – as anyone who has been near me for 15 minutes can attest – it does mean that I think more clearly when I have a whiteboard in front of me and a chisel tip marker in my hand.

Ode to whiteboards

“@aclairefication: No sticky notes. No whiteboards. #FiveWordTechHorrors” this happened to me last week.

— James Grenning (@jwgrenning) December 11, 2013

 

One Christmas gifts my husband installed a wall of whiteboards in our home for the children to draw and scribble. The children loved it and happily covered it with unintelligible childhood graffiti. As it turned out, this blank wall was a greater gift to me. When I was preparing to present at conferences in 2013, I was feeling quite blocked in writing proposals and producing presentation materials until I relaxed and just let myself have time with my home whiteboard.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed having a large expanse to fill with thoughts as they came spilling out. At my first testing job, my XP development team installed a wall of whiteboard for just this sort of thing, removing barriers to collaboration by having enough space for any conversation the team needed to have. Of course, some corners were dominated by persistent big visible charts but those lasted only as long as they were needed. Yes, I was spoiled.

I decided to keep my presentations simple and sketched the images I wanted to have in my slides on this wall. It turns out taking well lit pictures of whiteboards without glare is sufficiently difficult that there are apps for that. Go figure!

Takeaways

I also realized that I would be in a fix at the conference if I didn’t have a whiteboard handy, so I scoured the internet looking for portable options. It just so happened that one of my favorite nerdy websites was advertising a foldable pocket whiteboard. One look and I was in love. I was able to easily take notes in any way I saw fit and at a scale that pleased me, not being limited to eight and a half by eleven or whatever dimensions a digital application considered adequate.

In my day-long tutorial preceding CAST 2013, on a team with people I’d never met, I wasn’t sure how to begin solving the problem, but the casualness of a portable whiteboard that could be unfolded, scribbled on, wiped away, and stowed out of the way was definitely an asset to establishing good communication from the beginning.

It also came in handy when I was able to snag a table at one of the Agile2013 social events to catch up with a speaker whose talk I had missed. He liked it so much, he bought three. Subsequently, another friend from the conference asked whether that would be a good speaker gift and I heartily assented. Now I’m wondering whether this company pays for referrals. 🙂

Drawing pictures at work? Really!

At Agile2013, in his presentation Sketch you can!, Jeremy Kriegel explained using graphic facilitation to craft meetings that better involve attendees. People can focus on visuals easily and suggest improvements. This sketching is a combination of note taking and wire framing, which is something user experience (UX) folks do routinely as part of their work. He describes trading quality of the drawing for speed in order to keep the focus on communication, then enhancing the drawing later. The focus is on the need people are trying to satisfy and understanding the context of that need.

By sharing in a concrete way, you can validate precise language and discover where meeting participants are not agreeing. The result is a public record of the conversation that can be shared. (I’ve been known to take many many pictures of whiteboards in my day.) However, the communication is more important than the deliverable, which helped to free me of my concerns about how much artistic talent I have. I felt comfortable improvising and the sketching was a sort of performance, although in the class we were not standing up in front of a group.

Earlier today, I was having a conversation with a colleague at a whiteboard and sketching the interacting parts of the problem we are testing was very helpful for focusing the conversation and revealing areas that we needed to investigate. I’m definitely a fan of drawing pictures at work and I appreciate Jeremy’s encouragement.

Sketchy people

Periodically, I rediscover Gaping Void and wallow in the talent and inspiration of these images. My most recent visit followed a tweet to his blog on new year inspiration:

I guess my “mountain” was drawing cartoons (like the cartoon at the top rightfully indicates), although it took me DECADES to find that out. – Hugh MacLeod

However, I was so drawn to his live sketching videos that I decided to give it a whirl. Not sure where to begin, I snagged a photo of my 95-year-old grandmother off a family member’s Facebook and took a shot at digital sketching. I’m pretty pleased with the result. It’s not my best effort and I’m not worried about that because it was so much fun to try.

Gma

When I’m so busy that I don’t have time to blog or read a book or play a board game, I still have time to sketch something out, however crudely drawn the result might be. I know I won’t turn into an Andrea Zuill overnight, so I keep at it a little at a time.

I’m finding that sketching on digital photos or enhancing existing images (so far no original memes!) is much much easier than starting from nothing, so that’s kind of my thing at the moment, but I’m finding the courage to stretch a bit more into original composition. We’ll see if anything comes of it. For now, it gives me something creative to do that personalizes my slides a bit more.

How do you use sketching for fun or profit?

Guest Author in Better Software

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Approaches, Better Software, Experiences, Exploratory Testing, Publications, Visualization

≈ 1 Comment

Check out my recent article Feeling Lost in the Woods? Mind maps Can Help! [PDF] on page 26 of Better Software magazine.

LostInWoods

Claire takes us on a nontraditional journey where designing and implementing testing approaches can be rapidly organized into a hierarchy of connected elements. Mind maps, used primarily for visual and conceptual thinking, may be just the answer for quality assurance professionals.

Resolved

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by claire in Experiments, Publications, Social media, Software Testing Club Atlanta, Speaking, Testing Circus, Training, Volunteering

≈ Leave a Comment

Be-It-Resolved

Recently, Testing Circus was asking about how testers are framing their new year. Many testers contributed their plans to form quite a list! Will sharing our plans with others help us to achieve what we set out to do? It seems worth a try. More to the point, will we actually execute all the plans we make? I think it will be much like exploratory testing in adjusting based on new information we learn, but at least I’m starting out with a plan.

Here are my charters:

  1. Read. Blogs, books. Or even watching videos and listening to podcasts. (I know not everyone is a visual learner.)
  2. Small groups for collaboration, especially local. This year, I’m focusing on our fledgling Software Testing Club Atlanta.
  3. Put yourself out there to get public feedback (blog, pitch to a conference, etc). I’m currently pitching to Agile2014 and trying to get back to blogging and writing articles after the holiday lull.
  4. Experiment (trying what you’ve read, discussed). This. Everyday.
  5. And, of course, connect through social media!

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