[IxDA Discuss] How can QA help UI team

[Pawson, Mark]

 I have been asked by the QA Manager how her team can help UI,
particularly in regards to any spec docs her team can refer to when
testing. Her team is under resourced so its not a matter of they are
looking for something to do. :)
Since I am a one man team in a mid size ( >2000 employees) international
company my UI involvement tends to be idea generation, lots of research
and acting as a catalyst to let other dev teams know about unique design
solutions from their colleagues around the globe. As such I do not see
value in spending my time writing huge spec documents which no one
reads. Rather I have written a high level style guide which has more to
do with usability guidelines, and proposed a standard UI framework from
some Expert reviews I have done of several apps all built on the same
core architecture. I have shared these light weight docs with QA and
encouraged them to be familiar with their content so when they are
testing an app they can note if the app could or should be improved by
following these guides. I could certainly use them as ambassadors of
good UI. Common sense plus a past life in QA tells me that product
managers will treat these issues as enhancements. Should they be? What
other informal ways can QA assist? Usability test observers comes to
mind...

Thanks

Mark Pawson