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aclairefication

~ using my evil powers for good

Category Archives: User Experience

SpringOne 2019 Links

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by claire in Coaching, Context, Developer Experience, Events, Personas, Speaking, SpringOne2019, Training, User Experience

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Thanks to everyone who came to our Time to Good DX presentation!

Time to Good DX

We often hear focus on the customer, but what do you do when you
customers are your coworkers? Developers are the largest group of
individual contributors in software teams. It’s about time Developer
Experience (DX) got the focus it deserves! Devs are users, too!
Wouldn’t it be great if your user needs were met?

DevNexus – TimeToGoodDX – HandoutDownload

I know an hour isn’t enough time to delve deeply into this area, so here are some links to help you to explore this important subset of UX!

Articles

Time to Hello World and this

Drink your own champagne

API docs as affordance and this

Communication and this

Development pain points

Characteristics of good DX

Great APIs – heuristic analysis

Developers as a special case of users

Product management in platform products and in API products

API model canvas

(Vanilla UX)

UX personas

Presentations

Great DX in 5 minutes!

Platform as Product

More platform as product

DX Segments

DX Principles

DX Trends

UX tools for Developer users

Lean Enterprise

Reports

Developer Skills [PDF]

Podcasts

Don’t Make Me Code

Greater than Code

Tooling

git-utils

assertj-swagger

Examples of DX

Jest automation framework

Netflix DX

Faster deployment

Visualizing metrics

Stripe API docs

Twilio API docs

Open source triage

Apigee DX

Salesforce DX and this

DevNexus 2019 links

20 Wednesday Mar 2019

Posted by claire in Coaching, Context, Developer Experience, DevNexus2019, Events, Personas, Speaking, Training, User Experience

≈ Leave a Comment

Thanks to everyone who came to our Time to Good DX presentation!

Time to Good DX

We often hear focus on the customer, but what do you do when you
customers are your coworkers? Developers are the largest group of
individual contributors in software teams. It’s about time Developer
Experience (DX) got the focus it deserves! Devs are users, too!
Wouldn’t it be great if your user needs were met?

DevNexus – TimeToGoodDX – HandoutDownload
Time to Good DX from Claire Moss

I know an hour isn’t enough time to delve deeply into this area, so here are some links to help you to explore this important subset of UX!

Articles

Time to Hello World and this

Drink your own champagne

API docs as affordance and this

Communication and this

Development pain points

Characteristics of good DX

Great APIs – heuristic analysis

Developers as a special case of users

Product management in platform products and in API products

API model canvas

(Vanilla UX)

UX personas

Presentations

Great DX in 5 minutes!

Platform as Product

More platform as product

DX Segments

DX Principles

DX Trends

UX tools for Developer users

Lean Enterprise

Reports

Developer Skills [PDF]

Podcasts

Don’t Make Me Code

Greater than Code

Tooling

git-utils

assertj-swagger

Examples of DX

Jest automation framework

Netflix DX

Faster deployment

Visualizing metrics

Stripe API docs

Twilio API docs

Open source triage

Apigee DX

Salesforce DX and this

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?

Fresh Perspective

17 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by claire in CAST 2013, ISST, Training, User Experience

≈ Leave a Comment

fresh_princeI can’t remember what it was like to start working as a tester. Ten years later, the only impression I have left of that time is voracious learning. So yesterday’s debut of the ISST webinar series focusing on the first 2 weeks on the job as a tester was a good refresher for me.

Ben Kelly gave a description of two distinct new testers and their experiences of adjusting to the expectations for testers. This reminded me of Pradeep’s talk at CAST this year about his “baby shark” new testing trainees. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me since they’re among the founding members of ISST.

Both emphasized that novices have an advantage: ignorance. While that doesn’t sound like a very positive description, one you might not want to claim for yourself, it resonates with me. Most of my professional progress has been made asking the dumb questions that filled in my ignorance, pointing me in the right direction rather than remaining stagnant.

But ignorance is not enough, merely lacking information one stagnates. Curiosity turns ignorance into action, transforming it into a powerful tool. (I think this is what people refer to as beginner’s mind, though I haven’t studied that concept myself.) Pradeep explains that newbies have a tactical advantage in not having been misled yet. Ben reminds us that while asking questions seems so simple it’s actually deep exploration of context, not just about business content but also about team expectations.

When Pradeep’s freshers (I think I’m using that right, right??) go out into the world to help start-ups with testing, they’re learning multiple contexts. This adds a bit of complexity to the already daunting task of acquiring testing skills. Sounds intimidating, doesn’t it? While these testers get on-the-job training, the start-ups experience the value of a context-driven testing approach focused on providing business value, which shifts from business to business.

Ben and Pradeep emphatically drilled us on providing information in the way the consumers can understand. Knowing that they have multiple audiences, testers must be excellent communicators. As an intuitive person, this intimidates me – and it sounds like other empathic testers may have similar trouble. I took my first stab at messaging about testing with members of my product team since that was most familiar to me. However, test reporting above the product team hasn’t been a big part of my career so far. My primary approach there has been getting to know the end users.

I know this webinar was aimed at less experienced testers, but I’m reminded that I could use a fresh approach myself. Like some (formal) practice in session debrief? Joining forces with sales for product demos? What approaches keep test reporting fresh for you?

Image credit

Testing For Humans? Try Empathy

11 Friday Oct 2013

Posted by claire in Context, Experiences, Experiments, Personas, Skype Test Chat, Soft Skills, Test Retreat, User Experience, User Stories

≈ 1 Comment

sympathy-empathy
Two months ago, Matt Heusser organized Test Retreat and I attended, along with 27 other testers open to new ideas and wanting to change the world. Sound a little ambitious? Let’s find out!

My first blog post in this series is about Michael Larsen‘s Testing For Humans, which he was unable to live blog due to presenting. 🙂 However, Michael did post Alessandra Moreira‘s notes in his live blog of the event.

Fortunately, I was able to live-tweet the talk that he described as:

Testing for Humans: It’s Sticky, Messy and Very Satisfying

Abstract: Software development is a beautiful thing. We often create amazing ideas and features that would be wonderful… if only those pesky humans that end up using, abusing, and mis-understanding our brilliant code weren’t part of the equation. Unfortunately, we’re all in the business of developing software for people (yes, even when it’s machine to machine communication, it serves human beings somewhere. What are some ways that we can approach testing software outside of the theoretical ideals, and actually come to grips with the fact that real human beings will be using these products? How can we really represent them, test for and on behalf of them, and actually bring in a feature that will not just make them happy, but represent the way they really and actually work, think and act?

Expected Deliverables: An excellent debate, some solid strategies we can all take home, and some “really good” practices that will be helpful in a variety of contexts.

My take-aways were:

    • People are imperfect so ideal users aren’t enough for testing.
    • By definition, a composite of many people (e.g. user persona) is a model.
    • Too many user descriptions based on small differences is overwhelming, not practical for testing.

On Wednesday night of this week, I joined Christin Wiedemann‘s regularly scheduled Skype test chat with some other lovely wonderful tester folks and we focused on empathy in testing. We wrestled our way to some working definitions of empathy and sympathy, which was much better than shallow agreement though it took a bit of time to establish. We agreed that testers need to observe, focus on, and understand users in order to serve them better. We find that empathy for our users and passion for our testing work go hand-in-hand since we care about helping people by producing good software.

Then we struggled with whether empathy is an innate trait of a person testing or whether empathy is a learnable skill that testers can develop through deliberate practice. (Go watch the video behind that link and come back to me.) We concluded that knowing what others are thinking and feeling, getting inside their skins, in the context of using the software is essential to good testing, though this might require a bit of perseverance. This can go a long way toward avoiding thinking we have enough information just because it’s all we know right now.

As I mentioned in the chat, I’ve found that user experience (UX) design is an amazing ally for testers. One tool that helped me to develop more empathy for my users is user personas. (Later, I found that forming user personas of my product teammates helped me to develop empathy for them as well.)

I immediately took to (end) user personas as a natural progression from user stories. After all, user stories are focused on value to and outcomes for a particular group of users. Describing those users more specifically in a user persona dovetailed nicely. Rather than some sterile requirements that never name the user, identifying a role – or, even better, a rich symbol such as a named primary persona – focuses the product team’s efforts on serving someone by helping us to understand the purpose of the work we do.

We also discussed interviewing users, visits to users, and experiential exercises as techniques to help us call upon empathy when we are testing. In my work history, I’ve been fortunate to hear about my UX team’s great work in a collaborative design workshop, to contribute to designing ad hoc personas for my product, to participate in a UX-led contextual inquiry, and to log actual usability sessions led by my product team’s UX designer. (Yes, my fast fingers came in handy. Yuk yuk.) My innovation days team developed a usability logging product that evolved from an existing solution I tested/used in those usability sessions, so I was a natural fit to test it. I’m curious about empathy maps but haven’t tried them myself yet.

It’s fair to say I’m a UX-infected tester. More than fair. I identify with the curiosity I see in the UX profession and I admire the courage to kill their darlings (carefully crafted designs) when evidence shows it is time to move on. After all, we’re not building this product to marvel at our own cleverness but instead to serve humans.

Image credit

Big Visible Testing Full Length

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by claire in Agile, Agile2013, Approaches, Context, Experiences, Experiments, Personas, Publications, Speaking, Training, User Experience

≈ 2 Comments

Here are the slides from my full length Big Visible Testing talk, presented at Agile2013 in Nashville, TN on August 6, 2013.

Big Visible Testing (Full Length) from Claire Moss

My experience report paper will be published by the Agile Alliance under the conferences archive as part of the proceedings of the Agile2013 conference. You can also download the PDF here: ClaireMoss-BigVisibleTesting-Agile2013

During the year and a half of experimentation that included the big visible charts that are included in this slide deck, I read over the following resources, only some of which would easily fit into the IEEE format. This is the full bibliography of my research, as far as I have been able to track down my sources. (At the time, I wasn’t expecting to cite them for anyone else, so I probably didn’t bookmark everything I read.) I hope the following links will prove helpful to you in developing your own big visible charts. Let me know how it goes! And please share any sources that you find helpful. I’m always looking for new inspiration.

REFERENCES

My first dev team was an XP dev team that dogfooded our own digital signage product to display success/failure for the thousands of unit tests in the suite (i.e. single flag for whole suite red/green).
Other eXtreme Programming big visible charts

Extreme Feedback Devices summary – I loved this team’s “feel-around” approach to feedback!

  • code smell
  • auditory
  • scrolling marquee
  • code flow
  • lights

Alistair Cockburn coined information radiator
Alistair Cockburn’s burn charts (burn up vs burn down)
Information radiator flash card
More information radiator stuff

Lisa Crispin’s whole team approach includes Big Visible Charts
Energized Work site map backlog
More from Lisa Crispin’s tour of Energized Work

Heatmaps (from code analysis)

Paul Holland’s Exploratory Testing charter Kanban board
Lanette Creamer and Matt Barcomb gave a presentation that included ET charter management in big visible charts; podcast preview of their session

Visualizing above the product team
Including faces of people/profiles in the big visible charts
I can’t remember whether I’d see this one at the time or not… it might have been something I discovered after my time on the team mentioned in my presentation: Visual management for agile teams

New inspiration

Although the above resources were all I knew at the time I began my experiments, as I prepared my IEEE paper for the Agile2013 conference proceedings, I was tracking down my sources and came across these other relevant pages & posts that have given me some great ideas of things to try next!

Gojko Adzic’s visualizing quality

Michael Bolton’s mind-maps

I like this greyhound chasing the rabbit decoy visualization Alistair made
Alistair’s projects (radiating)
Alistair’s collaboration cards

Lego representation of bugs

Other cool extreme feedback devices:

  • bat signal (as a Batman nerd, I heartily approve!)
  • bear lamp
  • traffic light

Clothesline wallboard contest entry – as an avid crafter, I adore this one!
Wallboard contest results

After some discussion in my session about suggesting solutions for distributed teams, I was looking for some digital implementations of big visible charts, but I don’t know how these would work out for you.

Atlassian on information radiators for extreme feedback (with broken image links – sad!)
Atlassian on information radiators
Greenhopper (Jira plugin) wallboard
More on Jira Wallboard

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