Updated Glossary July 2020

Alexa Voice Service (AVS): Amazon’s service offering for a voice-controlled AI assistant. Offered in different products. Source: https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Alexa-Voice-Services-AVS Autopilot Short for “automatic pilot,” a device for keeping an aircraft on a set course without the intervention of the pilot. Source: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/automatic_pilot Blockchain Infrastructure: A complex, decentralized architecture that orchestrates many systems running asynchronously over the …

Pushing the Boundaries of Test Automation: an Overview of How to Automate the UX with Heuristics

One of my current responsibilities is to find ways to automate, as much as practical, the ‘testing’ of the user experience (UX) for complex web-based applications. In my view, full test automation of UX is impractical and probably unwise; however, we can use automation to find potential UX problems, or undesirable effects, even in rich, …

More Just Isn’t More…

Most have probably heard the expression ‘less is more‘, or know of the ‘keep it simple and stupid‘ principle. These are general and well-accepted principles for design and architecture in general, and something that any software architect should aspire to. Similarly, Richard P. Gabriel (a major figure in the world of Lisp programming language, accomplished poet, and currently …

The Mobile Guru

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Jason Barile – Testing Testing

I’ve been reviewing a lot of test plans recently. As I review them, I’ve compiled this list of things I look for in a well written test plan document. Here’s a brain dump of things I check for, in no particular order, of course, and it is by no means a complete list. That said, if you …

Rob Lambert: The Social Tester

Creative Director at the Software Testing Club, Rob Lambert always has something to say about testing. Lambert regularly blogs at TheSocialTester where he engages his readers with test cases, perspectives and trends. “Because It’s Always Been Done This Way” Study the following (badly drawn) image and see if there is anything obvious popping in to …

Blogger of the Month: Karen N. Johnson

Karen N. Johnson began as a technical writer in 1985 and later switched to software testing in 1992. She maintains a blog at TestingReflections, a collaborative site where she is featured as a main contributor. In her latest entry, she discusses search testing with different languages. Here is an excerpt from her blog: “I started …

Are Testers’ Ethnographic Researchers?

People who follow me on twitter or via my blog might be aware that I have a wide range of interests in areas outside my normal testing job. I like to research and learn different things, especially psychology and see if it may benefit and improve my skills and approaches during my normal testing job. …