This impatient monkey

I’m impatient.  I also expect technology to work.  When it doesn’t appear to be working, when I’m getting no feedback as to what is happening, I get frustrated.  I click-click-click the mouse button.  I hammer the enter key.  I repeatedly thump the keyboard.  “Work damn you!” I curse.

The technology was probably just creaking along, it may have got there in the end, but my hammering is the last straw, it breaks the application. Frozen out, frustration turns to user anger.

The developer tuts, “it’s your own fault” he says, “you broke it with your impatience”.  And that is why Dan North’s recent blog about Monkey Testing fills me with happiness.  Testing software for my monkey behaviour, so that it doesn’t break when I do things that I’m not supposed to do – because I am human.

2 Comments

  1. Do not click Stop or Reload | dancingmango · Wednesday, 7 January, 2009

    […] This is frankly inexcusable.  If the form doesn’t appear to work, the user will inevitably click on the button more than once.  The code should accommodate this behaviour, not weasel out of it with small print. In developing the form there was an important acceptance or test case left out, that for monkey behaviour. […]

  2. Frank Carver’s Punch Barrel / Monkey testing · Wednesday, 7 January, 2009

    […] This impatient monkey – dancingmango […]

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