Presentations about testing

Podcasts, slides, videos and more

Rob Mitchell & Mike Williams — Test your JavaScript

Rob Mitchell PortraitMike Williams PortraitMike Williams and Rob Mitchell will explain why you should test your JavaScript code, what to test, and how to go about it. They’ll talk about full-​​stack browser-​​based tests, as well as true unit tests, and explain where each are appro­pri­ate. They’ll also dis­cuss inte­gra­tion of your tests into an auto­mated build, and you’ll leave with a burn­ing desire to try it out on your own projects.

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Daniel Burka — Changing successfully: Adapting your interface over time

Web Directions South 2008, Sydney Convention Centre, September 26 1.40pm.

Daniel Burka PortraitUser inter­face design is an iter­a­tive process — the design of Digg and Pownce have been a study in evo­lu­tion and adap­ta­tion. This talk will inspect the why and how of these iter­a­tions by look­ing at spe­cific case stud­ies from the two projects as well as pre­vi­ous client work Daniel has tackled.

The case stud­ies will exam­ine spe­cific user inter­face chal­lenges that have arisen and will chop them up into their var­i­ous bits. How do I iden­tify a chal­lenge? What is the best approach for get­ting started? How do I solve the prob­lem con­cep­tu­ally and tech­ni­cally? How will I know if I solved the chal­lenge suc­cess­fully? Case stud­ies have been selected that are espe­cially per­ti­nent out­side of their spe­cific con­texts to help you in your every­day UI design.

The pre­sen­ta­tion will focus on design inspi­ra­tion, decision-​​making processes, tech­ni­cal solu­tions, and learn­ing from mis­steps as part of a designer’s iter­a­tive process.

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Lisa Herrod — User testing for the rest of us

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Lisa Herrod PortraitEveryone knows they should be doing it, but like soft­ware test­ing, it’s one of those things we often don’t get round to. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, Lisa Herrod looks at some sure fire user test­ing tech­niques that pro­duce proven results, don’t cost the earth, and are easy to imple­ment. After this ses­sion you won’t have any more excuses for not doing solid user test­ing of any site or appli­ca­tion you develop ever again.

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Jackie Moyes — Converting research findings into business speak

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008.

Jackie Moyes PortraitGetting your com­pany to adopt a user-​​centred design approach can be an uphill strug­gle. The first stage typ­i­cally is to get them to agree to incor­po­rate usabil­ity test­ing in to the devel­op­ment process, at a stage early enough to actu­ally imple­ment any design rec­om­men­da­tions. The sec­ond stage is to con­vince them to do more ethno­graphic style research to under­stand the larger con­text of the task that the site is try­ing to sup­port. The biggest chal­lenge comes last – how to help the busi­ness own­ers make the men­tal leap between the in-​​depth find­ings from the research and the impli­ca­tions and oppor­tu­ni­ties it presents to your core busi­ness strat­egy and prod­uct roadmap.

This is the chal­lenge that the User Experience team at News Digital Media have been address­ing. In this pre­sen­ta­tion, Jackie will dis­cuss this issue in more depth and present exam­ples of ‘design tools’ the team have been exper­i­ment­ing with to try and bridge this gap and help the busi­ness develop more user-​​centric strategies.

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Steve Baty — Analysing user research data

A pre­sen­ta­tion given at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Australia, May 16 2008.

Steve Baty PortraitIn our efforts to bet­ter under­stand the end users of the sites & appli­ca­tions we design, we gen­er­ate a great deal of data. That data is use­less to us until it has been ana­lyz­ing and inter­preted. This pre­sen­ta­tion looks at some of the meth­ods & tech­niques we can use to make sense of user research data in a mean­ing­ful & rig­or­ous way. The pre­sen­ta­tion will look at some of the com­mon types of quan­ti­ta­tive data col­lected dur­ing user research, and the sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis meth­ods we can employ to make the most of our data-​​gathering efforts. The ses­sion cov­ers prac­ti­cal exam­ples such as task com­ple­tion rates, time-​​to-​​completion, page view com­par­i­son, as well as some basic con­cepts in statistics.

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