The Rat Trap

Another of the capsule insights I took from The Shape of Actions by Harry Collins (see also Auto Did Act) is the idea that a function of the value some technology gives us is the extent to which we are prepared to accommodate its behaviour.

What does that mean? Imagine that you have a large set of data to process. You might pull it into Excel and start hacking away at its rows and columns, you might use a statistical package like R to program your analysis, you might use command line tools like grep, awk and sed to cut out slices of the data for narrower manual inspection. Each of these will have compromises, for instance:

some tools have possibilities for interaction that other tools do not have (Excel has a GUI which grep does not)
some tools are more specialised for particular applications (R has more depth in statistics than Excel)
some tools are easier to plug into pipelines than others (Linux utilities can be chained together in a way that is apparently trickier in R)

These are clear functional benefits and disbenefits, and surely many others could be enumerated, although they won't be universal but dependent on the user, the task in hand, the data, and so on.

In this book, Collins is talking about a different dimension altogether. He calls it RAT or Repair, Attribution and all That. As I read it, the essential aspect is that users tend to project unwarranted capabilities onto technology and ignore latent shortcomings.

For example, when a cheap calculator returns 6.9999996 for the calculation (7/11) x 11 we repair its result to 7. We conveniently forget this, or just naturally do not notice it, and attribute powers to the calculator which we are in fact providing, e.g. by translating data on the way in (to a form the technology can accept) and out (to correct the technology's flaws).

The all that is more amorphous but constitutes the kinds of things that need to be done to put the technology in a position to perform. For example, entering the data into a small display which can be hard to read under some lighting conditions using very fiddly rubber keys with multiple functions represented by indiscernible graphics.

Because these skills are ubiquitous in humans (for the most part), we think nothing of them. But imagine how useful a calculator would be if a human was not performing those actions.

I had some recent experience of this with a mapping app I bought to use as a Satnav when driving in the USA. I had some functional requirements, including:

offline maps (so that I wasn't dependent on a phone or network connection)
usable in the UK and the USA (so that I could practise with it at home)
usable on multiple devices (so that I can walk with it using my phone, or drive with it on a tablet)

I tried a few apps out and found one that suited my needs based on short experiments done on journeys around Cambridge. Despite accepting this app, I observed that it had some shortcomings, such as:

its built-in destination-finding capacity has holes
it is inconsistent in notifications about a road changing name or number while driving along it
it is idiosyncratic about whether a bend in the road is a turn or not
it is occasionally very late with verbal directions
its display can be unclear about which option to take at complex junctions

In these cases I am prepared to do the RAT by, for instance, looking up destinations on Google, reviewing a route myself in advance, asking a passenger for assistance in some cases. Why? Because the functionality I want wasn't as well-satisfied by other apps I tried; because in general it is good enough; because overall it is a time-saver; because even flawed it provides some insurance against getting lost; because recovery in the case of taking the wrong turning was generally very efficient; because human navigators are not perfect or bastions of clarity either; because my previous experience of a Satnav (a dedicated piece of hardware) was much, much worse; because while interacting with the software more I started to get used to the particular behaviours that the app exhibits and was able to interpret its meaning more accurately.

Having just read The Shape of Actions, this was an interesting experience and meta-experience and user experience. A takeaway for me is that software which can exploit the human tendency to repair and accommodate and all that - which aligns its behaviour with that of its users - gives itself a chance to feel more usable and more valuable more quickly.
Image: https://flic.kr/p/x2M76w

Comments

Can Code, Can't Code, Is Useful

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "If testers can’t code, they’re of no use to us" My first reaction is to wonder what you expect from your testers. I am immediately interested in your working context and the way

Meet Me Halfway?

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Stop answering my questions with questions." Sure, I can do that. In return, please stop asking me questions so open to interpretation that any answer would be almost meaningless and certa

Not Strictly for the Birds

One of my chores takes me outside early in the morning and, if I time it right, I get to hear a charming chorus of birdsong from the trees in the gardens down our road, a relaxing layered soundscape of tuneful calls, chatter, and chirrupping. Interestingly, although I can tell from the number and variety of trills that there must be a large number of birds around, they are tricky to spot. I have found that by staring loosely at something, such as the silhouette of a tree's crown against the slowly brightening sky, I see more birds out of the corner of my eye than if I scan to look for them. The reason seems to be that my peripheral vision picks up movement against the wider background that direct inspection can miss. An optometrist I am not, but I do find myself staring at data a great deal, seeking relationships, patterns, or gaps. I idly wondered whether, if I filled my visual field with data, I might be able to exploit my peripheral vision in that quest. I have a wide monito

Postman Curlections

My team has been building a new service over the last few months. Until recently all the data it needs has been ingested at startup and our focus has been on the logic that processes the data, architecture, and infrastructure. This week we introduced a couple of new endpoints that enable the creation (through an HTTP POST) and update (PUT) of the fundamental data type (we call it a definition ) that the service operates on. I picked up the task of smoke testing the first implementations. I started out by asking the system under test to show me what it can do by using Postman to submit requests and inspecting the results. It was the kinds of things you'd imagine, including: submit some definitions (of various structure, size, intent, name, identifiers, etc) resubmit the same definitions (identical, sharing keys, with variations, etc) retrieve the submitted definitions (using whatever endpoints exist to show some view of them) compare definitions I submitted fro

Testers are Gate-Crashers

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "Testers are the gatekeepers of quality" Instinctively I don't like the sound of that, but I wonder what you mean by it. Perhaps one or more of these? Testers set the quality sta

Vanilla Flavour Testing

I have been pairing with a new developer colleague recently. In our last session he asked me "is this normal testing?" saying that he'd never seen anything like it anywhere else that he'd worked. We finished the task we were on and then chatted about his question for a few minutes. This is a short summary of what I said. I would describe myself as context-driven . I don't take the same approach to testing every time, except in a meta way. I try to understand the important questions, who they are important to, and what the constraints on the work are. With that knowledge I look for productive, pragmatic, ways to explore whatever we're looking at to uncover valuable information or find a way to move on. I write test notes as I work in a format that I have found to be useful to me, colleagues, and stakeholders. For me, the notes should clearly state the mission and give a tl;dr summary of the findings and I like them to be public while I'm working not just w

Build Quality

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "When the build is green, the product is of sufficient quality to release" An interesting take, and one I wouldn't agree with in general. That surprises you? Well, ho

Make, Fix, and Test

A few weeks ago, in A Good Tester is All Over the Place , Joep Schuurkes described a model of testing work based on three axes: do testing yourself or support testing by others be embedded in a team or be part of a separate team do your job or improve the system It resonated with me and the other testers I shared it with at work, and it resurfaced in my mind while I was reflecting on some of the tasks I've picked up recently and what they have involved, at least in the way I've chosen to address them. Here's three examples: Documentation Generation We have an internal tool that generates documentation in Confluence by extracting and combining images and text from a handful of sources. Although useful, it ran very slowly or not at all so one of the developers performed major surgery on it. Up to that point, I had never taken much interest in the tool and I could have safely ignored this piece of work too because it would have been tested by

The Best Laid Test Plans

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "What's the best format for a test plan?" I'll side-step the conversation about what a test plan is and just say that the format you should use is one that works for you, your coll

Test Now

The Association for Software Testing is crowd-sourcing a book, Navigating the World as a Context-Driven Tester , which aims to provide responses to common questions and statements about testing from a context-driven perspective . It's being edited by Lee Hawkins who is posing questions on Twitter , LinkedIn , Mastodon , Slack , and the AST mailing list and then collating the replies, focusing on practice over theory. I've decided to contribute by answering briefly, and without a lot of editing or crafting, by imagining that I'm speaking to someone in software development who's acting in good faith, cares about their work and mine, but doesn't have much visibility of what testing can be. Perhaps you'd like to join me? --00-- "When is the best time to test?" Twenty posts in , I hope you're not expecting an answer without nuance? You are? Well, I'll do my best. For me, the best time to test is when there

Hiccupps

Search This Blog