[TFUI] Re: Is test driven UI development conceptually different?

--- In [email protected], "Ryder, Phran (AM 
Transformation)" <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't seem to have the
> problems you do with TDD of UI. Firstly, the screen design itself 
will be
> done as a separate exercise with someone who cares very much about 
the
> ergonomics. This is never boring rather it is fascinating and 
rewarding
> trying to get a fast efficient pragmatic UI.

I think you're hitting on why it's conceptually different for me.  
When doing test first development, I "feel" like I'm designing.  
What little automted testing I've done gui clients "feels" like 
coding to spec - because the design was done already in a 
worksession just as you describe.  It's the coding to spec part that 
feels tedious, not the design work. 

> Secondly, if there are any complicated tests it indicates to me 
that I am
> probably doing something in the UI that I shouldn't be. So it is 
part of the
> design exercise to me.

In the comment above, by design did you mean the interaction design 
part - the part done in a separate exercise, or the code design 
part, the part you might be doing in java.  If you meant the 
interaction design part, there's the implication there that user-
interfaces that are simple to use are also simple to code.  Is that 
what I hear you saying?

That overloaded "design" word gets me sometimes...  A friend of mine 
has said that if you have some choices to make you're designing, if 
you don't, you're filling requirements.  One person's design becomes 
another's requirements.

I'm starting to hear that I need to see TDD UI a little differently -
 to not think of it as interaction design as I know it, but as 
code/object design.  I need to not necessarily think so much about 
what the user is doing and why, because we might have already 
resolved most of that stuff - but instead think of how the UI 
components are collaborating to get that work done.  

Is that how people doing TDD UI see it?

thanks,

-Jeff




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