So you probably know that I'm working on an app with a guy.

Well, I'm not really, I'm writing an app using his library of "back-end" code.

He's really, really, really not an app designer and quite old fashioned too. His idea of a save button was one with an image of a floppy disc on it... for an iPhone app.

Anyway, I'm finding it harder and harder to find ways of saying "No" to him.

Today he sent me an "app icon" that he thought would be good.

Go to www.sudokuwiki.org look at the favicon for the site... that's what he sent me.

It's beginning to feel like swimming upstream in a river full of treacle!



Oh, also, it made me laugh when after fixing some of his library code he said something like "I can't believe it's taken me 6 hours". I replied with, "I can completely believe that, I've been doing at least 6 hours a night almost every night for the past 3 weeks after getting home from my full time job".

I've left the tester recruitment to the other guy and he's only sent emails out to 4 people to ask them to test.

I just had a look at who they actually are...

1. 60 year old business manager based in UAE.
2. A Professor of dentistry based in Canada.
3. An architect based in Austria.
4. Don't know as his name isn't unique enough and he hasn't added a device anyway.

He has basically hand picked all of his mates (i.e. people he has worked with before, etc...) to test it. This is not a test. To test you need to send it to a wide range of users and get a feel from what they all think about it.

Altogether they have run the app 5 times and each time was for less than a minute.

I did suggest that we just stick the recruitment link on his site and I can accept/decline requests but he decided we only need 4 testers.

FFS!

Sounds about right for test from a dev perspective

LOL! I suppose.

It did make me laugh when I recieved an email that said somehting like... "No matter how many times I've tried to get the camera recognition to work it hasn't".

When I looked at his session logs he'd taken exactly 1 photo that had then gone to create a sudoku grid.

I think the thing that has annoyed me most is that the other guy has basically handpicked these guys rather than allowing lots of people to test. He's gone against everything I have said to him.

Oh another thing. In his feedback (the business manager in UAE) he said that he didn't realise you had to tap the screen to select the menu option.

He was moving left and right looking at all the different menu options but only accidentally found that you had to tap the screen to select it.

I'm going to (reluctantly) add a dummy "select" button (even though my 6 year old sister didn't need it) but surely the first thing you would think about a TOUCH screen is the fact that you have to TOUCH it! He also said "I've downloaded the wiki" and "the first time I read through the wiki". I realised after a while that what he meant was "I've installed the app" and "the first time I used the app".

Another reason I'm annoyed with the other guy's choice of testers. The testers he has chosen do not appear to be app users. Surely the best people to test an app are the people who are going to be using it?!