[IxDA Discuss] How can QA help UI team

[Jim Drew]

>From: "Pawson, Mark" <Mark.Pawson at ihs.com>
>
> 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. [...]
>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...

One of the best things you can do, in my opinion, is to build good bridges with the QA team.  QA is often treated as somewhere between an afterthought and an annoyance, a barrier to shoving the application through the pipeline and into the hands of the customer.  Getting QA better informed earlier in the process and having a voice at that stage can be a useful thing.  You get better and fewer bugs if QA has a chance to ask "Why are we doing it this way?" early on.

(Even just the UI guideline docs you mentioned are a boon to QA, since they can then know how to tell if something that looks wrong really is wrong.)

Also, while you've done extensive user research into what the problems are that need solving and what form the solution may take, it's the (black box) QA folks who end up knowing how the product *really* works, and thus they are the closest to how real experienced users will interact with it.  They can provide feedback in that arena that is better than you can get anywhere else (although you have to weed out the issues that are magnified due to "QA process" and the bypasses that are created due to intimate knowledge of the underpinnings of the product).

-- Jim Drew
   Seattle, WA