#1 Tip for Spring Cleaning

 

As the weather turns warmer and the flower bloom, thoughts turn to cleaning up and cleaning out.  Clearing away the cobwebs and all unnecessary things to begin afresh.  A founder of Twitter wrote a great blog post that was worthy of repeating here.

Tip for cleaning out your closet

Don’t ask, “Can I imagine wearing this?”  Instead ask, “Can I imagine this ever being the best possible thing in my closet to wear?”  Works for other things, too.

So, as we are busy building Remarkable for you, I can’t help but think about this.  Rather than asking “Can I imagine anyone using this feature?” I should instead be asking “Can I imagine this being the best feature of this product and the reason people use it and tell their friends?”  If the answer to the second question is “no,” then it might not be worth the effort.  Trust me, early indications are that the application will be extremely useful in practical and surprising ways and will really make your life easier.  If not, then we are doing our part.

This unbelievable (but apparently true) photo is from sidewalk_story on Flickr.

Test Patterns

This weekend, we started testing the Alpha version of Remarkable by Creative Outlet Labs.  After some initial browser compatibility issues that were resolved by weekend’s end, we were off.   Now, I can test my testing skills in a variety of methods.  Professional testers run scripts, do end-to-end and functional tests, and have statistical theory behind them.  Me, I take a more organic approach.

Here are my test patterns.  First, I check to make sure the features all work.  Like end-to-end testing, I try to walk through the application the way a real user would.  The test cases for this first release are pretty simple (after all we are starting in the epicenter and working outwards).  I capture bugs and enhancement ideas along the way in our handy-dandy tracking tool. 

I then start experimenting with the edges of the application.  How much text can I cram into a text field?  How big a file can be uploaded?  How complex can I make something before I can see the seams start to break?  This not only stresses the functionality to ensure that it will be able to survive in the wild, but it also allows us to test error handling.  How do we communicate to users of the software when things don’t go right?  Sometimes that is just as important as encouraging them when things are going well and they are using the application precisely how it was designed to be utilized.

As I go through, I am thinking of ways to make it easier, better, or faster for our eventual customers (you!).  This leads to some good ideas and some crazy, off-the-wall, and downright bad ideas as well.  No matter, I capture them all in our tracking tool so that we can rule them out (or refine them) later.  More ideas lead to better ideas, I think.

I am very excited about the early results of this testing.  Not only is it meeting the functional requirements we outlined, but I think we are on to some VERY innovative and insanely simple features that will make your life easier.  After all, I can see how they’d make my life easier.

While testing continues, we are heads down fixing issues that arise and working on the second Alpha release.  I can’t wait to see how the next phase goes. Stay tuned for more updates.