Targeting Quality 2018

Our human brains impact the way we perceive, develop, test and use software - knowing our cognitive limitations we can test more consciously and deliver more suitable software.

Some kind of obvious thing is that both software makers and users are human beings. But working with edge-cutting tech we tend to forget about our cognitive limitations. In each software development project there is the crucial question - how to make the people using that stuff? I would add the one more question: how to make the humans using that correctly, intentionally?

In my talk I want to introduce the cognitive approach which uncovers human perception limitations. By listing the issues like perception gap, schemas reasoning and cultural heuristics, I want to show the delegates what is realising-worthy. Also I want to present in easy-going way the few cognitive science theories (like Marr's vision, Gestalt rules, Gibson’s affordances) to make the delegates aware, how the brain is influencing the testing.

Being a tester it is important to review and test the product against both correctness (validation, verification) and usability. The things I cover are helpful both in analysis and test execution phases.
The delegates will be given the set of questions that help to check if they test considering the cognitive limitations. There will be the checklist for mobile testing and for web testing. The checklists will help them to assure the human-friendly software.