Today he posts a bit of Internet user interface foolishness:
Peculiar clippings from life on the web. I was filling out a maintenance report to fix the screen door, and was stuck on this connundrum.
I ended up entering “if it’s optional why is it required?” Mr. Helpful here.
Ah, gentle reader. As you might know, I had a blog back in the day called QA Hates You, and just about every day I made mock of Web site errors and whatnot. That was when companies at least seemingly tried to make their user interfaces work right.
I see on LinkedIn, sometimes, testers with Open to Work banners trying to remain relevant by posting such things, but: I think that a lot of places really don’t care. In much of my recent career, getting it right isn’t the goal. Getting the most money, getting the contract extended, that has been the goal. So problems you find and note just get ignored.
And the misconfigurations that I find in Application Tracking Systems, where you see this sort of thing all the time, are even worse. Why, by cracky, in my salad days, I would have tested them, too. But: Move fast, break things, leave them broken, get away with the loot before anyone is the wiser.
Also, because I’m pedantic, I have to point out Lileks misspelled conundrum. Because QA never rests, and QA knows no friends.
