Discussion on human-machine interface test

"Body" This article contains a list of common software problems that may exist during software black box testing in the software being tested. This article will not discuss the basic software testing ideas and common techniques , only for the software black box testing process in a number of issues to describe, and provide personal reference test opinions and preventive advice, hoping to provide a little help for beginners.

As the saying goes, "people rely on clothes horse saddle", good appearance can often attract eyeballs, inspire customers (users) desire to buy, and finally achieve the realization of commercial interests. The design of the software is also the case, Windows XP in the great commercial success on the one hand from it to the former rigid, in order to highlight the "application" of the Gray interface, from the "user experience" point of view to design the interface, so that the interface has a greater affinity. As far as the development trend of software design is concerned, good human-machine interface design is more and more valued by system analysis and designers. However, the design of human-machine interface (including help, etc.) to test, give an objective, impartial evaluation, but is found in newspapers. This paper tries to give some test opinions and principles from the angle of commonness analysis and personality analysis, which is simple and easy to get started. Play a purpose, readers.

We know: "No rules, no rod." In the software interface design emphasizes the individuality, we should not forget that the design of the software interface must first of all rules-concise, consistent, easy to use, which is all the software interface design and testing must follow the way, is the software human-machine interface in the prominent self-positioning of the group. Beautiful, regular software human-machine interface to break the new user's sense of software, so that the old users more easy to use, full reuse of existing experience, and try to make less mistakes. As a result, when testing the software human-machine interface (the design review stage and the system testing phase), it is advisable to test the human-machine interface of the software from the following angles.

Conformance testing

Consistency makes the software human-machine interface a basic requirement. The purpose is to make users familiar with the operating environment of the software and avoid the ambiguity of the related software operation. This requires us to determine whether the human-machine interface of the software can exist as a whole when testing. Here are some suggestions for conformance testing:

--The format of the prompt is consistent

--The format of the menu is consistent

--The format of the help is consistent

--the terminology in the hints, menus, and help is consistent

-The alignment between controls is consistent

--The input interface and output interface are consistent in appearance, layout, and interaction mode

--The syntax of the command language is consistent

--functionally similar interfaces are consistent in appearance, layout, and interaction (e.g. product Code search and product name search)

-When the same product family exists, whether it is consistent with other products in appearance, layout, and interaction (example: Office product family)

-the same level of text in the same context (general, highlighting, warning, etc.) in the text size, font, color, alignment is consistent

-When multiple successive interfaces appear in sequence, the interface looks and operates in the same way (there may be exceptions, such as an end-of-operation interface)

Feedback test

Suppose the user of the system is a novice novice, can you expect her (him) to do the work without error? But this is not the problem, the problem is that we all make mistakes, we all have something we do not understand. How to avoid this requires that our HMI has enough input check and error prompt function. Through the feedback, the user gets the error prompt or the task completes the praise language. But unfortunately, many of our systems are not doing so satisfactorily. Here are some suggestions for this type of test:

--whether the system accepts the customer's correct input and makes the prompt (example: mouse focus jump);

--whether the system rejects the customer's error input and makes a prompt (example: pop-up warning box, sound);

--The system displays the user's error input prompt is correct, easy to understand (example: "ERR004" such a hint makes people unintelligible);

--whether the system gives a hint of the user's specific input method before the user input (example: Website registration procedure);

-whether the icon or graphic used by the system prompts is representative and alert;

--The system indicates whether the language is graded by warning level and completion level (please be gentle to the user if not some destructive actions);

--whether the system provides highlighting on the interface (mainly menus, toolbars) (for example, when the mouse moves to the control, the control icon becomes larger or the color changes to a larger contrast to the background, and when the move is turned back to the original);

--whether the system gives a prompt for successful operation when the user completes the operation (many systems lack this step, making the user feel no sense of accomplishment).

Interface Simplicity Test

Is your HMI as symmetrical and clean as your face? What we tend to see is that many systems are designed to be human-machine interface-like patients with smallpox. So we have to do the pre-cosmetic inspection, here are some of the recommended terms for inspection.

--whether there is a blank space in the user interface (the interface with no blank space is disorganized, the usability is very poor);

-whether the intervals between controls are consistent;

-whether the controls are aligned vertically and horizontally;

--whether the menu depth is within three levels (not recommended beyond the three floor, you can refer to Microsoft 's example);

Whether the interface control distribution is grouped by function (menu, toolbar, single box Group, check box group, frame, etc.);

--whether the interface control itself needs to display the data by sliding the slider bar (it is recommended to use pagination display and provide data sorting display function);

In fact, a principled thing to do with this kind of testing is to take out the extra stuff and group it as much as possible.

Interface Aesthetics Test

Is your interface beautiful? Imagine a clothing model wearing an inappropriate clothes how will the display effect? I still remember the teacher said in the study of aesthetics: Beauty is the product of contrast. In the aesthetic testing of the software interface, we have to pay attention to some of the following suggestions.

-whether the foreground and background color collocation is too large;

Whether the foreground and background colors use lighter tones rather than dark colors (for example, blue without dark blue and green);

--whether the system interface uses more than three basic colors (in general, not more than three kinds);

--whether the font size is proportional to the size of the interface (the general Chinese uses Arial 9-12, English is the use of Roman or times New, Japanese using SimSun or Ming Dynasty);

--button more interface whether to prohibit scaling (generally not suitable for scaling, it is best to prohibit the maximum, minimize the button);

--Whether the system provides user interface style customization function to meet the user's personal preferences;

User Action Test

"Science is the philosophy of lazy people," this is my university professional teachers of a point of view. Our computer system is no exception. Our system allows users to be as lazy as possible (less elbow, less command, etc.), from this point of view, I believe you will have a deeper understanding of the nature of user action testing. I believe that none of the testers are willing to do much and reap less. In addition, the user is in some way an unexpected challenger and perpetrator. They seldom have much patience to deal with systems that they send with great expectations. Here are some test suggestions to determine if a user can be "lazy" and "Vent prevention".

--whether there is a user frequently operated shortcut keys;

--whether to allow the reversibility of the action (Undo,redo);

--whether the interface has the user's memory requirements;

-whether the response speed of the system conforms to the user's expectation;

--whether there is a more convenient and intuitive way to replace the current interface display mode, (such as the menu interface instead of the command language interface)

-whether the user can open the Help document (F1) at any time when using it;

--whether the system provides fuzzy query mechanism and keyword hint mechanism to reduce the user's memory burden (such as Tsinghua Purple Input method of the fuzzy sound setting);

--whether to provide the operation cancellation function for the operation which can cause long waiting time;

-whether to support the reversible processing of the error operation, return to the original state;

--whether the use of related controls (such as calendars, calculators, etc.) to replace the user manual keyboard input;

--if there are too many options, whether to use the drop-down list or the keyword search method to select the user altogether;

-system error is whether there is a recovery mechanism to return the user to the pre-error state (for example, Office XP file recovery);

--If the user enters data before the user enters the data, the actions that can be performed are forbidden (such as a specific button being dimmed);

-whether the system provides functions such as "WYSIWYG (WYIWG)" or "next hint" (e.g. preview);

Industry standard Test

Each industry has its own set of identity systems. Please do not "crash" as much as possible. This requires our human-machine interface Testers to understand the symbology of the software industry, otherwise it will be difficult to do so.

--whether the graphic symbols used in the interface are in line with the industry symbol system standards for the field of software;

--whether the terminology used by the interface conforms to the industry naming standard for the field of software;

--whether the color of the interface is more similar to the industry representative color;

--whether the background of the interface can reflect the industry related topics (such as: Environmental protection background generally use natural scenery as background);

--whether the design of the interface reflects the latest industry concept and the mass trend;

Of course, each software should also have its own personality, which embodies the software developers and the user-oriented domain of the specific needs. For example, Microsoft's start-up interface and Apple's start-up interface are completely different. A software that does not lose individuality, itself is the software producer's "advertisement spokesperson". Not only to highlight the producers, but also can not be distracting. Below we give some common software personality testing principles.

--whether the installation interface of the software has a unit introduction or product introduction, and has its own icon;

--whether the installation interface of the software is different from the interface generated by the common installation tool (for example: Jinshan Quick translation of the installation interface is more distinctive);

--whether the icon of the main interface is the maker's icon;

--whether there is a splash interface, whether it contains or reflects the producer's information, when the system starts to wait for a long time;

-whether the software has a version view mechanism, the version of the description of the creator or user identification;

--software interface color, background, layout and similar products have different, if there is, whether more concise, beautiful;

--whether the software interface operation can reduce the frequency of user input compared with similar products;

--software interface operation compared with similar products, whether in error prevention mechanism and prompt more intuitive, eye-catching;

--Whether the software interface provides the appropriate operating mechanism for special groups or special applications (such as Windows magnifier);

Summary

In a word, the testing of the software human-machine interface needs a test idea based on "generality" but emphasizing "individuality", the test of human-machine interface is different from other types, and more emphasis is placed on the software to be tested from the user's angle and aesthetics. Can not be too "vulgar", but not too "great". Many times, there is a tradeoff between emphasizing regularity and emphasizing individuality. This is an urgent need for our interface testers to think with the brain, to understand the intentions. This is also a great challenge for human-machine interface testers in aesthetics.

Discussion on human-machine interface test