TestTrack list windows display defects, test cases, requirements and more. Knowing what features are available will help you work more efficiently with TestTrack. In this video, I share some tips for working with TestTrack list windows.
usability
If you haven’t discovered the list window enhancements added in TestTrack 2010.1, you definitely should check them out. There are a lot of time-saving improvements, including the ability to customize list window text appearance, shortcuts for working with subsets of items, and more available data.
Keep reading to learn more about the 2010.1 release enhancements, then watch the Working with TestTrack List Windows video for a tour of TestTrack list windows.
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We recently released version 2010.1 of TestTrack, which contains many new exciting new features. One new feature that I would like to give some love to is Item Mapping Rules. This feature will benefit users who have more than one TestTrack applications, as it allows you to configure how field values are mapped from one application to another.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponRecently, a customer asked the following question: “How can you filter the list of test runs based on the test variants it contains?”
The reason the question came up is because, while you can display a “Test Variant” column in the Test Runs list window, you can only filter the column between runs that have variants and those that do not.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponAs a consultant, I have been exposed to many different development methodologies and processes. In most cases, assignments are performed by a person that is aware of staff resources and distributes tasks according to the availability of these resources.
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Being able to easily and quickly segregate data by various criteria is a requirement of any product that claims to be “easy to use.” For example, product management is interested in commonly reported issues and feature requests during product planning, but nearing the end of a release cycle they’re focused on critical issues that could delay the release. QA wants to see test runs yet to be executed or those that need to be re-run and development wants to see approved requirements that are ready for implementation. All of these scenarios create the need for distinct and re-usable “views” of the artifacts in TestTrack. This is where TestTrack’s tabbed views can make life much simpler for you as a user.
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I review a lot of UI design lately, and this is the thought that most often comes to mind:
“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A quick SAT-style analogy:
“Our software is bug-free.” : QA tested ::
“Our software is easy-to-use.” : Usability tested
Some good UI classes today, likely best explained by the slides. Jeff Patton also gave a good analogy for UX testing. Looking at a parked car, can you tell how fast it can go? Sure, with a bit of knowledge about cars, you can make an educated guess, but it’s still just a guess. Usability is like that, you can look at a product and guess how well a user can use it to accomplish a task, but you’ll never really know unless you see them try it.
He also made mention of Donald Norman’s Emotional Design which had some good points to it, and I’ll have to read that book next. In it, it’s mentioned that perceived ugly things are labeled by users as “difficult to use”. Users will even report bugs in the software and use those to claim that it’s of poor quality. A “pretty” UI will still get users to ask for fixes, but they’ll be much more forgiving of them.
Jared M. Spool also gave a good talk on what causes software to be labeled “intuitive” and steps to take to get there. A lot of his talk was theory and results of his testing, with some nice visuals on the slides. Unfortunately, the slides are not yet available.
Share on Technorati . del.icio.us . Digg . Reddit . Slashdot . Facebook . StumbleUponThe long-awaited conclusion…
Part 3: Post-Test
Our usability testing regarding recording seemed inconclusive. Both the old way of recording and the new way were intuitive enough for our testers to breeze right by them. In the end, we ended up with a kind of hybrid approach that seemed to please both the developers and the testers. It turned out something like this:
This organization and wording of the menu items spell out the actions they cause as clearly as possible to (hopefully) avoid any confusion.
As for the grid view, we made what changes we could before release to address some of the more troubling issues our test users had with it. Even more changes are in store for the next one and we plan to look at some even larger-scale changes for future releases. Many of the changes would not have been as high a priority or looked at as closely without actually seeing a user struggle with them. It’s difficult to ascertain usability from a list of defects marked “UI”.
A summary of post-test lessons learned:
- Sometimes testing won’t reveal what you want it to. Either perform a varied test, or go with what data you did get.
- Reviewing the video can reveal even more than your initial notes. Be sure to check it.
