The Community Choice Competition was launched in July. The Competition was made so that you the Huddle Community can have a say in the EuroSTAR programme
this year. We the Community to have a direct influence on the Conference and with the power to nominate and select one of the speaking slots, the Community demonstrated it’s passion for software testing.
Through the last few months we have had a huge number of submissions from those suggesting speakers they wanted to hear or suggesting themselves as a someone that would fit this slot.
Since late August the Judging process has seen every submission made accessed, discussed and scored based on its own merits. So now we arrive at the day where we can announce the successful Community Choice.
The Judging Panel
The Community Choice competition was designed for the Huddle community to suggest their favourite speakers and to be part of the Judging process as well. We have arrived at a winner thanks to you, our community. The Judging Panel read every submission, scored each on a strict criteria and were passionate in their consideration. I want to thank each and every one of them:
Kristoffer Nordstrom, Abir Khan, Steve Watson, Jesper Ottosen,
Claire Banks, Ron Fowler, Marzio Cancellieri, Ard Kramer,
Jasmine Vyas, Peet Michielsen, Iain Bright, Duncan Nisbet, Nick Shaw and Jim Peers.
The Community Choice
So with out further ado, the successful candidate for the Community Choice this year is:
Patrick Duisters and his submission:
“Learning by doing: Usability testing of an innovative medical device”
In this presentation I will tell you how and what I learned about usability, and how I used that knowledge to setup and lead usability testing program for a new medical DNA analysis system in a start-up company. I will share details on how and what I’ve done to test the user-friendliness and learnability of the system in a regulatory environment. The presentation will discuss the learning experiences from my team of biologists, researchers, hardware and software engineers and myself, and how this resulted in a user-friendly and easy to use system. This story is a real example of how I used applicable standards, different heuristics, methods and tools. But it also tells about the challenges of deploying a transparent and auditable usability program, involving various intended users, and making them and us enthusiastic about usability testing. The day after: The day-after the participants will realize that when you are engaged and curious, you can find your ‘own way’ in a complex problem. You don’t always have to be the expert if you want to learn.
By studying relevant papers, standards and other heuristics, combined with working ‘together’ with other disciplines you can learn from each other. This then forms the basis to come+R26 to a practical solution. Those solutions don’t always have to be difficult! Furthermore, again finding defects early, has shown to be cheaper than just ignoring them. Usability is often seen as subjective, but can be made more objective by doing usability testing. We can learn from other disciplines: Synergy. In this case with typically non IT colleagues.
Usability testing is FUN.
Takeaways:
Discover what I have learned from heuristics, methods and applicable standards as well as from my team.
Hear how to initiate and run usability testing of a (medical) device.
Listen to experiences on learnings in a multi-disciplinary team.
Congratulations Patrick and thanks to everyone who took part in the process.
