Let’s explore

Recently, Ursula and I have been improving the way that we test new Launchpad features.

Already, Launchpad has an extensive test suite but there are some things that automated tests can’t look out for. Rather than just testing the quality of our code, we also want to test the quality of the experience.

To do that, we’ve been doing more exploratory testing. Now, when a feature is getting close to deployment we will try out every part of the feature and make notes of anything in the experience that needs to be fixed before we release it. In particular, we’re interested in the feature’s:

  • ease of use and discoverability
  • completeness
  • quality of implementation
  • suitability to the problem it is solving
  • conformity to Launchpad’s principles and UI guidelines.

We’re also aiming to timebox the testing; something that takes too long to explore is likely too complex. For now, we’re using a 25 minute limit, as borrowed from The Pomodoro Technique, as it seems like a good starting point.

If you’re interested in what we’re doing, you can follow our progress both on the launchpad-dev mailing list and on the Launchpad dev wiki. Also, I’m hoping that we can get your help in testing beta features. I’ll write more about that soon.

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3 Responses to “Let’s explore”

  1. Ursula Junque Says:

    Go QA! 🙂

  2. Martin Pool Says:

    [like]

  3. Crazed Psyc Says:

    I always like to test the beta versions of everything, so how can I get to launchpad beta?

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