I had an interesting discussion with Josh Carpenter yesterday about how QA and UI Designers can work hand in hand from UI is being worked upon.
I mentioned things such as QA having to worry about double byte characters, RTL as well as other ui issues, and that there are certain guidelines that are used such as the Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines : https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/AppDesign/AppDesign.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH19-SW1
The guidelines are not set in stone, there may be a good reason for certain ui to be the way it is. That said, it does form a good basis in which everyone is on the same page in terms of how the ui should be.
We discussed some other things as well such as importance of bugs. I had always thought that since Dev/Designers/QA had a limited time in which to get the product out the door, that there is a basic priority order in which bugs are generally asserted. Not everything can be a blocker. Josh had pointed me to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which then can be translated in to design heirarchy of needs : http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/26/designing-for-a-hierarchy-of-needs/ It was nice to hear some affirmation of what I had believed through some other research that had been done before me. We ended up talking about how UI was at the top of the pyramid, and usually accounted for last; my proposal was to work from the beginning of the design phase as QA and work in parallel with the functionality of the application so that design from a ui perspective could be looked at and certain things could be averted well ahead of time.
I think the most interesting point though in the discussion was when I spoke about human cognitive behavior should be taken into account. Josh ended up talking to me about various design concepts, and let me borrow one of his UI Design books. My mind was blown away from all the valuable QA information that I could get from looking at certain things from a UI Designers standpoint. How little I knew that I was just on the cusp of things here.
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