The current project I am working on, i did the visual design and then volunteered to be a part of the QA team, I realized that there were so many things which the QA guys were giving a miss and doing a QA from a designer's perspective has really been beneficial for the project. Also I am not leading the QA team but just a team member, doing QA from a different perspective so in that regard I agree with Jim that a designer should not be in charge of the QA process, as they are not trained for it. I think that's why its working in my current project .
Sonica Visual Designer New Delhi India On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Jim Drew <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > In this thinking, turn things around: while you might have a QA engineer or > two who provide great input on design ideas, would you put QA in charge of > the design process? Probably not: their expertise may sometimes approach or > overlap those needed for design, but there will be holes, gaps, and so > forth. Unless you are truly cross-training, you're going to end up with > ultimately inferior results. > > Which isn't to say that having QA involved in the design process, or Design > in the QA process, isn't a great idea. It most certainly is. > > Watch out as well for asking designers to do QA work on the items they > designed. They can easily be way too picky and/or unable to look at the > pieces they designed with a fresh eye, to see interactions and different > angles. Better to use their designer eye to look at other aspects of the > product. > > -- Jim Drew > Seattle, WA > Software QA for 18 years > > > > On Oct 27, 2008, at 7:36 AM, Damon Dimmick wrote: > > The company I work for is a very lean, fast moving company, and we're >> constantly looking for ways to tighten our product life cycle timelines. >> >> One thing we've noticed in the last few months is that IxDA (and general >> design practitioners) have been extremely valuable not just during the >> design phase of a product, but also during the ongoing Quality Assurance >> / Quality Control phases as well as the final Quality Acceptance phases >> of the product lifecycle. >> >> This being the case, we're experimenting with the idea of putting IxDA >> people in charge (or in review positions within) the QA process. I've >> been playing around with this model myself on a couple of projects with >> very strong results. The net benefit seems to derive from the fact that >> there is really no one better to certify that a product meets QA >> requirements than the very people that identified the necessary >> interactions, UI results, and full design elements to begin with. >> >> So far, this also seems to fit in nicely with the fact that our design >> team tends to be very busy at the start of the project (front loading >> interaction design and then visual design) and then gets much less busy >> as the development cycle begins and ends. It seems a really good use of >> our time to swoop back in after the design phase and act as part of the >> QA process, making sure that developers are conforming to our >> specifications via a formal testing structure. >> >> I was wondering if anyone else has had experience with this kind of >> structure, and if so, what challenges, results, and tips can you share? >> We're sort of excited about the idea on our end, as our initial forays >> into this model have really helped projects move along faster and with >> better results. Being a small/midsized team, we don't have a large QA >> department, so this allocation of resources seems to fill a lot of gaps. >> >> Any thoughts out there among my colleagues? >> > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
