Whatever happened to Pluto's craters?

Or ... a funny thing happened on the way to the Kuiper Belt.

I wrote my last article about Pluto in a flurry of excitement after we received the confirmation that New Horizons had made it past Pluto, and had captured data.  There was just a minor problem, to "do the science", the probe had to turn it's camera toward Pluto, and hence it's dish away from the Earth, and so it's only much after the event that we're starting to see some of the more closer images.

Even so, the latest images we'd had before it "went silent for science" he had back were pretty exciting.  I also said looking at them, "We see craters on Pluto, but not many of them".

In my last article, I talked about the planetary evolution science I learned in my degree.  We formed from a cloud of dust, it collides to make bigger and bigger objects (the Sun, it's planets and their satellites).  It's a somewhat chaotic process - eventually the planets form, but there's still asteroids and comets out there still colliding with them.  That can range from a fairly minor event (shooting star) to something more catastrophic (move over dinosaurs).

These impacts are most dramatically seen on the Moon and Mercury - because these world have no weather system, so remain preserved ...

We see craters on Venus, the Earth and Mars - but in each case the weather can erode these over time.  We also see them on many of the satellites of the ice giant planets, one of the most dramatic of which is Mimas, which has a giant crater which makes it look a little like the Death Star.  In actual fact we don't think you could have a bigger crater without the satellite splitting!

So we know that cratering happens throughout the universe - so look at that picture of Pluto.  Can you see those dark marks, especially the spots, which have to be craters?  Can you see the craters there?

There's just a problem which occured the day after I posted, and NASA scientist started posting, how one of the few things they haven't seen is any craters on Pluto.  But yet huge mountain ranges on such a small planet.  With so few craters out there either Pluto is relatively young, or something odd is going on out in the Kuiper belt, with incidents of cratering so incredibly low compared to elsewhere in the solar system.

So I got it wrong.  But what's been really interesting to me, is how I got it wrong.  It's a fantastic demonstration of an effect called confirmation bias, which I was always hoping to find a way to cover, and here we are!

First of all - I need you to be honest.  When I talked above about seeing dark rings in picture of Pluto, did you see craters too?

Confirmation bias works like this - if you look at a picture like that, which is slightly fuzzy, if you know that craters exist all throughout the solar system.  Then you are going to see shapes which your mind will recognise as craters.  Your mind is looking to confirm what it already thinks is there.  The problem is, there are no craters there, you've created a mirage of geology in your mind, you've fooled yourself.  And this in many ways is how much magic and illusion works.

It's a huge problem for us, because our eyes will sometimes see what our mind and heart really wants to see.  And this can be a problem for everyone, even scientists and testers.  How many times have you found a bug, and tried a few different options, and sure you know what the pattern is, then someone tries something around your patten, and shows a huge hole in it?  This is how it impacts us.

I'm going to talk a bit more about this in my next piece, focusing on how this impacts us in testing.  But for now I'll leave you with a picture of the Sputnik plain on Pluto, more "not craters" ...

Pluto: Because science ...

As discussed a little in my previous blog, the last few weeks have been really exciting to watch the New Horizon's probe get closer.

Let's start by showing you something - at the start of the year, this was as good as it got for Pluto - our image taken through the Hubble telescope ...

For all the amazing optics Hubble offers, it's not substitute for being up close and personal.  What has been amazing for me is to revisit much of the astronomy I learned whilst a graduate at the University Of Sheffield, and look at ways to apply the lectures of Professors Fred Combley and David Hughes to what I was seeing.  When we visited Neptune, I was just about to start studying with them, and hence I saw this planet only through their explanations.  But Pluto was mine to look at and make observations!

I'm also aware from discussions in my office, how very much I take what I know for granted, so this is an opportunity to give a quick lesson in science, to talk about how what we've seen in Pluto on the one hand confirms a lot of our models, but also asks so many new questions to a scientifically inquiring mind.

How our Solar System was formed

Actually to be honest, we don't know for certainty.  But what we have is a model which fits as many of the facts that we have - that essentially is what science is.

We believe that all star systems started out like this - a huge nebula of gas, which we see throughout the galaxy.

Typically these clouds are made of about 80% hydrogen, about 19% helium (the most abundant elements in the galaxy), and less than 1% is "everything else".

But gas clouds don't stay as gas clouds forever - even in the example above you can see that it's irregular, meaning some bits are more dense than others.  And this is where a phenomenon called accretion comes into play.  When the nebula is evenly distributed, gravitation (which is caused by the mass of an object) is pulling in all directions.  But once you have a clump of higher density, then this piece starts acting more like a point source, and starts to have higher gravitation.  This means it pulls in more gas from around it ... which means it gets heavier ... which means it's gravity increases ... which means it pulls in more material ...

So a lot of material from the nebula is pulled in, most goes to the star, but some actually accretes itself into other objects orbiting around the forming star.  This left over material forms the solar system as we know it.

All the planets in our solar system - and indeed our Sun - are made from the same source material.  So why do they seem so different?

One factor as we've talked about is gravitation from the Sun.  The Sun is the largest object in our solar system, and indeed the closer you'd have gone towards the Sun, the denser the cloud these objects would have formed from would be.

This presents us with a problem though - if this is true, then logically the cloud which would form Mercury would be the most dense, and therefore Mercury should be far and away the largest planet in the solar system (instead of Jupiter).  But it's not.

Clearly there's a second factor - which is the Sun's heat and it's solar wind.  When we look at spectral lines from the Sun, we have a good idea of the composition of the gas cloud we formed from.  The closer we are to the Sun, the hotter it is and the stronger the solar wind, especially once the Sun started becoming large enough to burn hydrogen and operate as what we know as a "main sequence star".

All this would mean the closer you were to the Sun, the more volatile lighter elements would be - especially gasses.  These would be blown outward by a combination of radiation from the sunlight and the solar wind (think much of how steam leaves a kettle).  What would be left behind is the heavier elements, the iron and silicates especially.  This is why planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars are called "the terrestrial planets" being made of mainly rocks and iron.

But as we've said, the further you get from the Sun, the colder it gets.  And at just beyond the asteroid belt, something odd starts to happen.  Gasses become that much less volatile and even "sticky", starting to clump together (and generally acting less like you'd expect a gas to behave).  When you combine "sticky gasses" with that phenomenon of greater density the closer you get to the Sun, you create a perfect storm, and something like Jupiter happens.

Jupiter is an oddity - it's 2.5 more massive than all the other planets of the solar system put together.  It's composed primarily though of hydrogen - the lightest element in the Universe.  And yet in Jupiter it's also the most dense planet.  The hydrogen of Jupiter thanks to the enormous gravitational pressure of the planet is acting in a way we just don't expect of hydrogen on Earth!

Temperature is everything - water and ice are the same substance, but one can be sculpted significantly more than the other.

As we move from Jupiter through the other "gas giants", we get the laws of diminishing returns, each planet smaller than the last (although Neptune and Uranus are almost on a parity).  Beyond Neptune the science says that the density of cloud that could form planets would never be able to form anything significant - or so our lectures in the 1990s went.

And they were right ... but just because we would not see anything significant, does not mean we'd see nothing.  Indeed, thanks to Hubble, we've started to detect a whole load of what we now call proto-planets which form what we now call the Kuiper belt.

This band seems analogous to the asteroid belt - but where that is made from terrestrial iron and silicates, we postulate that the Kuiper belt if made of frozen gasses and ices.  And much as Jupiter dominates the so called "gas giants", Pluto dominates this group of what we could call "ice dwarves".

Here comes New Horizons

Before we look at Pluto's pictures, let's talk about what we knew before this month,

• We knew that Pluto had several satellites, including Charon
• We had a good idea of Pluto's mass, thanks to the orbit with Charon
• We had an idea of the size of Pluto (although it's turned out to be a bit more massive than expected, but not by much)

Knowing it's mass and knowing it's size is a good start, as it allows us to work out it's density.  And knowing it's density we can make a good guess at it's composition just by comparing with other planets.  We expect from Pluto for it to be "mainly ice with some rock".

Okay - we've gone on enough - time to include a picture ...

This is a "false colour" picture of Pluto and Charon.  It's false colour because as Sunlight is about 0.2% that of at Earth, it's similar to trying to work out the colour of something via moonlight.  Thankfully the onboard Lorri camera is set for such conditions.

Let's start by talking to that colour - it's red, mainly red.  Having spent time with Professor David Hughes red makes me think rust and iron oxides.  More than likely, given the density, some kind of iron oxide within ice.

So what of the white heart-shaped band which has so captured the public's imagination?  Well it doesn't really fit.

To me, it's baffling.  I think we're looking at a mainly red world, with an ice patch.  I say think because I can see cratering on the red part of Pluto, which suggests it's older.  So where did this white patch come from?

It could be Pluto turning itself inside out, and the outflow of a massive ice volcano.  The cleaner white ice feels clearly younger than the red patches which dominate.  One way to be sure is to from radar modelling.  Whichever area has "lower altitude" is likely to be the elder area (on the Earth volcanic flow always goes over exiting flow).

What has fascinated me looking at Pluto and Charon next to each other ...

Pluto looks mainly red, with a white patch, and Charon mainly white with a red patch?  Is it possible that there was some kind of low-speed collision between a white Charon and a red Pluto, which would allow for transfer of material between the two?  I'm kind of reminded of a low speed "fender bender" bumping between two cars where paint from each car is transferred to the other.  Spectroscopic analysis over how similar these patches are on the two different worlds will either dispel or add fuel to this idea.

Likewise there's the mystery of the cratering.  We see craters on Pluto, but not many of them.  Our own Moon is heavily cratered, with some craters such as this star shape, the impact is extreme enough for material to almost reach the lunar escape velocity, with deposits over almost a quarter of the surface ...

We see similar phenomenon on many moons around the gas giants, but around such large, massive worlds which are gravitational magnets, that's not too surprising.

Pluto is about 20% the mass of the Moon, so any similar collisions should be as dramatic (if not more so), with material being blow around the globe.  But although we see cratering, so far we've not seen those tell-tall lines radiating from impacts.  Are impacts less frequent and of less energy being so far out?  Well, maybe more detailed images of the planet can answer that.

And then again there's the atmosphere.  The ability for a body to retain an atmosphere is proportional to it's mass - however although Plutos atmosphere is minuscule compared to Earth (no surprise there), it's significantly larger than the much more massive Moon, despite being much smaller in mass.

Again, one factor is believed to be temperature.  The Moon is (in cosmic terms) the same distance from the Sun as us (when it's facing the Sun).  Heat means energetic gas particles which would quickly leave the low gravity of the Moon.  Even though Pluto is much smaller, the gas particles there are less energetic, so less likely to be able to reach escape velocity.

Now add in Pluto's odd orbit, meaning at times it's closer to the Sun than others.  It's possible that some of it's ices could boil or "sublimate", venting gas which would become an atmosphere.  We see similar phenomenon in comets, which too are part-time residents of the Kuiper belt.

Have you noticed so far how every observation we've made so far leads to more questions, and things we can test and check?  This is the nature and fun of science - we answer questions, but in doing so propose new questions.  It's also one of the reasons I find testing to be such a fun discipline to be part of - good testing is good exploring, solving questions, asking new questions.

Stay tuned for more information from New Horizons as it's downloaded (it will take 16 months to download data from the probe) here.  And a special shout-out to friends Dan and Gabrielle who I've enjoyed sharing this journey with.

New Horizons - a final frontier

Part of me just does not want to sleep.  It's excitement.


Currently the New Horizons space probe is only a few days away from it's destined fly-by of Pluto.  This is quite a monumental day - it's likely to be the last time we get a "first" look at the surface of a new "planet" during my lifetime (technically it's designated a dwarf planet).  And already what we can see in grainy pictures is intriguing - this heart-shaped "continent" of what could be ice.

Pluto

It's exciting.  We know it's size and mass, it's about a fifth of our own Moon.  We have a good idea because of this and where it is that it's made of mainly ices - it's incredibly cold there, and the Sun has only 0.1% the heat we get in our orbit.

But we know nothing of what it looks like.  Pretty much we'd imagined some cratered object like our own Moon or Mercury, just made from a different material.  But as the image above shows, it looks like something else is going on, not just some uniform object which has been impacted with cosmic debris.  What kind of geological processes are in play here, and why does it's nearby partner dwarf-planet of Charon look so different?

Pluto and Charon

In the last few years we've found a handful of other dwarf-planets.  We used to think Pluto represented the edge of the solar system, but instead it marks the start of a whole other realm known as the Kuiper Belt where the dominance of gas giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune gives way to a cluster of much smaller objects - asteroids and dwarf planets.  It makes us appreciate how the solar system has no "edge" to it as we were once led to believe.

Most of all it's exciting because it's exploration.  We have never been here before.  We are seeing something totally new - we may go back (but with taking almost a decade to get there, it won't be any time soon), but if we do, it'll be to clarify things we learn in the next few days.  This is exploration at it's most raw - driven as all exploration is by curiosity.

You can find the latest here.

Seeking rapport in testing

I'm very aware that this blog has been a little quiet of late - some of which is intentional, and which I'm going to let you know about.

This year I've had a focus to my study - something I think could well take a few years to really come to fruition.  There are three sources I'm working through - although to me, I'm feeling there is a lot of overlap,

• I'm doing an online Cognitive Behaviour Therapy course
• I'm working through an excellent series of audio lectures on critical thinking
• I'm working through some of Jerry Weinberg's writing on the secrets of consulting

First of all - I do not want to become a therapist on any level.  But here's something I find, and really want to explore.

As a tester, I often find "unhealthy" attitudes towards testing, and I know I'm not alone.  What do I mean by unhealthy?  Well often it can be overly optimistic, not understanding what testing really does and the function it performs (blaming testers for the bugs they find sound familiar?).

This is supported by the exploration of psychology within the "Your Deceptive Mind" audio lectures.  We'd like to think the way we make decisions is we review the evidence, then decide a course of action.  In actual fact, we tend to emotionally decide an outcome in advance, then filter the evidence we encounter to support that outcome (a bit like our flat earther last year).

Likewise the models in our mind are always trying to find simple solutions to complex areas.  We don't like complexity.  Often politicians win at the ballot box because they have a simple (often woefully simple) solution to a problem, and many people feel they can get behind it.  Within testing this often manifests itself as "surely out there is a tool which will simplify all this for us", combined with the salesman patter of "this tool will reduce your need for testers".  It's something our brain wants to believe, and will often get us stung in the process.

In pretty much all this research a common term is coming across as a first line of addressing - rapport.  The word gets bandied about a lot - but what does it really mean?  Well to me it means giving someone room to explore and explain their approach and thought processes in a non-judgmental manner.

This seems to be the core of both counseling and consulting - if someone feels they're being judged, they tend to hold back, and especially be defensive regarding why they do things a certain way.  Our first step as a consultant is to understand the framework and the decisions which are being made.  A good consultant can then build on this, and suggest alternative methods of viewing things, sometimes nudging, sometimes challenging that world view.

Such change is slow, and can be a bit frustrating - but it also has the potential to be permanent.  You are finding ways to experiment and demonstrate factors to your clients to earn their faith and confidence.

It's a lot easier to enforce a new test doctrine or process, and have people adapt or leave.  But unless you've done some groundwork, people will either throw it away as soon as you leave, or (potentially worse) be slavishly devoted to your method without understanding it (and you've just created your very own Cargo Cult).

All this theory of course is wonderful - but as ever, it's the point where it's put into practice that's the true test.  That work - and the methods and approaches which can support this - is ongoing ...

If you have any thoughts or experience in this space, I'd of course love to hear about this in the comments section below.

"Gay marriage" - a personal evolution of understanding

If there is one phenomenon which seems to have gripped the world, it's the legalisation of same-sex marriage.  I like to think it started in New Zealand back in 2013, and certainly a huge milestone was reached this week in America.

I personally have welcomed these laws.  But at risk of being seen as a bit of a jerk - I have to admit that I wasn't always so positive about the idea of same-sex marriage.  What I want to do is look at what changed my mind, particularly when it comes to avoiding entrenched thinking in ourselves.

I first encountered the idea of same-sex marriage back in about 1993, when someone was trying to get me to sign a petition about it at University.  I have to be honest, and say that I didn't sign it.

Unlike a lot of people who thought "homosexuality was a sin", I didn't have that problem at all.  Heck, as the defence of so many goes, "I even had a lot of gay friends".  But I'd grown up in a society where homosexuality was considered "something different" - indeed in the UK we were often told that the age of consent for gay sex (21) was higher than that of hetrosexual sex (16), because "it was a confusing time where young people hadn't decided who they were".

But marriage, well was marriage.  It was a sacred thing (yes, I was Christian), it was all about having children, and saying two people of the same-sex could be married was ridiculous.

So from such an entrenched viewpoint, what came to change my position?

I got married

Okay - I may be a guy, but in hindsight, I probably had this idea that "you get married, and it's all like a fairytale ... they lived happily ever after".

I might need a minute here ...

The reality is somewhat different.  I like to consider myself a veteran of marriage - with 18 years in October.  I need to be frank, it's no fairytale, and there have been really tough times.  There have been times I didn't think we'd make it.

There has been attraction to other people, times we've got on each others nerves, and arguments galore.  When people first meet and fall in love, they want to do everything together - but sooner or later it's realised that although there might be a lot of common ground, there are areas where each person wants slightly different things.  Great relationships manage to balance up the needs of two people with a good element of compromise so that neither feels too neglected.  To sum it up, I think it's something like this,

• Us time
• We doing something you like
• We doing something I like
• Me doing something I like on my own/with my friends
• You doing something you like on your own/with your friends

To me now, marriage is about having someone who is prepared to stand at your side, and face the perils of the world to make a difference.  So not so much this ...

But pretty much these two ...

We knew other couples who (shock horror) didn't want children

Remember that "sacred thing" I talked about, where a marriage between a man and a woman was all about being able to have children?  To our surprise, once we were married we started to encounter people who had absolutely no intention of having children - far from it.

Did anyone try to suggest to them that "their marriage" was somehow compromised by this?  Nope.

Some of those gay friends of mine ...

More than anything, this had a huge factor.  Yes, in my marriage, I was "in a relationship" and as discussed above, learning that being married wasn't all happily ever afters.

But seeing gay friends over years also be in a relationship (one particularly close couple in particular), I noticed some really important things.  They went through the same trials and difficulties I'd noticed in my own marriage.  Dealing with separation due to work demands, coping together through tragedy and sometimes clear "getting on each other's nerves".

I know it's no glossy poster for gay relationships.  But here's the thing, my experiences were their experiences.  For better, for worse.

But here's the thing, we lived in a society which would claim that because me and my partner were different gender, somehow our relationship was more "valid"/"sacred"/"worthy" than that of Simon and Steve.  That was a nonsense - because all I could see was another couple going through the same trials "that couples go through".

So that's what change my mind - not the cause, or the arguments, however worthy.  But the maturing of knowing people who were being affected, and coming to realise "we're not so different".  A policy on paper might have a certain logic, but there's nothing to getting perspective like knowing the people affected by such a policy, people you've come to love and respect.

In the light of changes to law there's still a way to go - a lot of people see the legalisation of same-sex marriage as an affront to their faith, I read that being gay is still considered a crime in almost 100 countries.

Attitudes change - I know, mine did ...

Four simple steps to becoming the best tester you can be ...

This piece has appeared in Testing Circus recently, however it's so at the core of my philosophy, I really wanted to include it here within my other writing!


It seems right now thanks to YouTube's advertising policy, every time I want to watch a music video, I have to endure some ghastly advert of "hi ... I'm going to tell you the secret of how you can turn your life around in 5 easy steps".

I hate those hard sell advertising of "I learned the magical secrets of how to be a millionaire, and I'll share them with a room full of 100 people in my upcoming workshop ... for $10,000 a ticket".

I have to admit, I do have a tiny bit of a mercenary streak, and for a moment, I was thinking "wow ... I could do something similar for testing".  The only problem is, the testing pool is already full of sharks right now, and adding more doesn't help the community.

I've ended up talking almost daily to a young tester named Guna, who wants to become the best tester they can be.  She has an awesome drive of energy, and already is very active in the community, whilst being in a difficult position of being a sole tester on their project.  I'm very glad to find many of these "lone testers" joining Twitter, and seeking out the testing community.

From these conversations with Guna though, I've been wondering, What is the process to becoming the best tester you can be?  I've been sketching them down for a week, and as a list they do seem surprisingly simple - occasionally I'll think to add something new, but then realise it actually goes back under the umbrella of another item.

So these are my four simple steps to becoming the best tester you can be.  They are very simple concepts - however the complexity arises I'm afraid from the fact these are not "tick each off and turn your brain to standby".  They are values to live each day by - they don't guarantee you will be a brilliant tester today, but promise that you will be a better tester than yesterday.

Expand what you currently know

You have some knowledge of testing right now.  Look at methods to expand it.  For most people that means "let's look for a training course", and courses are really useful.  But there are also other methods - find out a book on testing, read a testing magazine or blog.

But don't forget to socialise as well - I learned a huge amount working alongside testers in EDS, simply because we used to all take a walk to the sandwich shop at lunchtime.  We'd talk about football, news, and TV mainly.  But we'd also mix in experience from other projects, things we were doing today in the test space etc.  That drip feed of knowledge from others over 2 years actually amounted to something quite tangible.  And indeed half that group I'm still connected with, and still my first line "brains trust" when I want to run a testing idea by.

In many locations such as Wellington, Sheffield, Brighton etc there are testers meetups where you can mingle with other testers, expand your network, and learn a few things.  As well as a wealth of things to watch on YouTube or TED talks.

Ask yourself whether at work, or in your networking, "am I having meaningful conversations about testing?".

Try out new ideas

Don't just keep sticking with "we've always done it like this".  Try and find new ways to trial out ideas for testing.  And here, "trial" is the operative word - don't build a critical delivery around something you've never tried before.  Find a way to try it out in a way that won't cause a meltdown if it doesn't go as planned.  Be prepared for needing to modify your first approach to "remove the kinks".

Ask yourself why - from your experience in testing, and from other's testimony - this new method will make a difference for the project in front of you now.  How can you tell if it's working?

This leads nicely to the third point ...

Monitor and seek feedback

Get used to trying ideas.  Sometimes unexpected things will happen - I can't tell you what, because that's why they're unexpected.  Sometimes your idea is basically good, however you may need to step back, see the bigger picture, and make some tweaks and improvements.

And don't just rely on your own observations - ask around people you trust.  Hopefully right now, you're working right alongside people you trust (if not, ask yourself how can you build that trust?).

Get feedback from others about how things are going.  Maybe they don't know much about testing?  It might be a good opportunity to talk to them a little about how you testing working and fitting in the grander scheme.

At times though you might find the gulf between your theory and running it in practice makes your idea unworkable.  Don't be afraid to "chalk this one to experience", maybe you now have enough information to see the old way had values you didn't originally see?  Maybe your approach would work better for a different project.  That experience is hard won and yours to use going forward.

Test everything

Embrace the philosophy and critical thinking which are core to the craft of testing.  In everyday life we build our thinking on an invisible raft of assumptions we often aren't even aware is under us.

Once in a while open your eyes to the world around you, and as a mental exercise ask yourself "how can I prove to myself beyond doubt that ...".  You may want to prove to yourself that "the world is round", that "roses are red", or that "two different people both independently recognise the same food stuffs as a 'sweet' taste".

Software and testing is built on a raft of assumptions, some assumptions are like "the Earth is round", we just take for granted without asking "what proof have I actually seen directly?".  But sometimes we need to be mentally aware of them, because some are not sound assumptions to make - and many projects have been caught out by not realising them!

Embracing critical thinking is all about trying to notice assumption and bias, and hopefully avoiding being duped or made a sucker.  A kind of critical life skill in a world with so much misinformation!

Developing an approach to responsive design website testing

Since it's introduction in 2011, responsive design has become increasingly important in websites, and with good reason.  Prior to it's use, websites struggled to support the increasing uptake of access from smartphones and tablets.  Some sites would have to develop separate (and thus costly) websites - one for viewing from PCs, and one for viewing for mobiles (typically hosted at m.*).

Responsive design was a methodology of having the same page source, which would scale according to the size of page available - allowing a single source of web content to be supported on difference sizes and devices - from laptop to smartphone.  It basically allows all your information to "fit" horizontally, so if you're on a mobile device, you don't keep having to resize or scroll your screen horizontally <->.

There is a wonderful website you can try this out on here.

Open in full page on your browser, and it should look a little like this ...

Now reduce the size of your browser a little, and you should find that instead of two columns of entries, it reduces to a single column ....

Now take it down even smaller, as if you have the limited number of pixels you get from a mobile, now the labels go above the data fields ...

Pretty cool huh?  But there are also a few potential pitfalls, and this article will talk you through some of them.

Whoo-hoo, mobile testing, I'll have me some of that!

Something we need to be crystal clear about, when we're talking about testing responsive design on mobile devices, we're basically just using them as browsers.  This isn't connected with testing mobile applications which can be installed and work through Google Play or the Apple's App Store, that's a whole other different field of testing (but some people get confused).

Creating a strategy

To get the ball rolling, you need to start setting a strategy - across mobile devices and browsers.  Responsive design uses some newer HTML features, so there are older phones and browsers which really struggle.  So the question has to be - what browsers/devices matter?

When we've done browser testing in the past, we've just tended to install a whole host of browsers onto our machine, and maybe some virtual machines to cover older versions of IE, and just "get started".  Here's the catch though - it's free to install a browser (yes, even Safari).  But mobile devices cost - and if we're talking a high end model, then it costs a lot!  You have to be selective, and your client has to be willing to support the purchase of these devices.

Even "hey guys, does anyone have a phone, I just want you to check this site in testing" is a bit dubious.  You're running your testing strategy from "what you can find around the office".  The other thing is that a mobile phone is a very personal thing - I might check a site for you, but I wouldn't let you take away my phone to look at a problem I'd encountered.

If your client is keen on developing a responsive design site, then they need to be comfortable with renting or at least purchasing some devices.  And here's the thing,

• Going forward, you will have to do some responsive design checking for every release.  It's not just something you bolt on, work for a few week and don't have to worry about anymore.
• New devices are always being released.  This means revising those devices you use about every 6-12 months (a good rule of thumb is every time there is a new version of iOS).

Which devices?

The best answer to this is to talk to your client and ask "what browsers/devices have 5% of traffic or more".

Of course if you are just creating a responsive design, you might not be able to have reliable figures.  In this case there are lots of sources out there.  Mobile test consultancy Synapse provide some useful resources (and I've used Jae before, and he's well worth bringing in).


Apple devices - you can find information about the most popular here.

Android devices - you can find information about the most popular here.

Right now, the jury is still out on Windows Phone 8.1 uptake, as is being able to cross compare device usage (iOS vs Android vs Windows 8.1).

Looking through that list, I'd say at a bare minimum, you'd need to consider the following in your test suite,

• iOS 8.X device
• iOS 7.X device
• KitKat device
• JellyBean device

For these devices, I'd also try and consider lower spec models, especially with smaller screen resolution.  [In responsive design, smaller screen means less real estate, and potential for problems.  As testers we like problems]  That can often mean looking at a smartphone over a tablet.

Beyond that, I'd try and see it I could talk up a purchase of something in Lollipop (it's a low share, but it's the future), and maybe Windows 8.1 (especially as there are some dirt cheap Windows Phones out there right now).

Regarding the browsers on those devices - most people just use the build in browser (until analytics tell you otherwise).

Remember - this is my analysis from the current market - it will change!  Once your site is up, try and get analytics to help profile popular browsers/devices, after all it doesn't matter what other people are using, what matters is what your client's customers are using.

And on that bombshell, just a few weeks after Microsoft announced the death of IE, look who sits at the top of the most popular browsers for reading this blog?

Test Website Access

Well, typically the website you're producing is kept tightly under wraps until it's launched.  Don't forget to have a discussion about that with your web team.  Do you have a VPN you can set up on devices to access your test environment?  You're going to need some form of solution to get your device to see your test pages.

Can't we just get around needing mobile devices, and just use the browser in small mode?

If you make your browser 480 x 800 - isn't that the same as using a browser?

It's to be fair a good first step, but as you'll see below, some of the problems come from the operating system.  Android and iOS have special build in ways to handle certain items like drop down and pop-ups which mean they behave slightly unexpectedly.

So I'm set up - what next?

Okay, so someone approved your devices, you have an accessible test area and you're ready to go ... and?

So what exactly are you going to test?  What it really helps to do now is come up with a way to summarise your application.  To cross browser and cross device test you need to repeat the same elements of testing over and again for every browser and device.

Do you have any clear idea what those elements are for your system?

The following is a guide to my approach ... and remember I looked at some of this a couple of years ago (but just for browsers).

Page checking
Create a map of every page.  Confirm that,

• can every field can be selected and data entered?
• can every check box selected/unselected?
• can every drop down box selected?
• can every button be selected?
• can you select between tabbed pages?
• check for pop up confirmation and error messages

You are basically looking here for something not working, a button missing etc which would prevent you from being able to use a page!

Functional Checking
What are the main basic functions of the website, I need to make a list of them, and repeat on several browsers and devices.

Here's some examples (discussed previously),

• Registration
• Login
• Change my account details

Generally the tests per browser/device don't have to be exhaustive - you are repeating a few examples across multiple browsers after all.  But ideally should include a success and a failure (you always want to check an error message is displayed).

Being able to create a summary overview for testing of your website, is something I hope to explore in the future - so watch this space.

Common Gotcha's

These are the areas I've commonly found problems with on responsive design.  You'll notice that some of these can be countered by good, up-front design ... so if as a tester you find yourself in a design meeting, go in forearmed ...

Landscape to portrait to landscape

A simple test - part fill your page in, turn it on it's side.  Do you lose your data?  Does any page element vanish?

Turn it back to it's original orientation, and check again.   Sometimes the changed orientation causes a page refresh, and things go missing!

Drop downs

The mobile device overrides how drop downs are handled in browsers ...

On the left is the iOS carousel, and on the right the Android selection list.

The problem though occurs if you have long selectable items on your drop downs, For example, consider a list of security questions,

• What was the name of your first girlfriend/boyfriend?
• What was the name of your favourite film?
• What was the name of your junior school?

All these will truncate the questions, so all the user will see is "What was the ...".  There's really no solution for this, but rethinking the approach/redesign.

Pop ups

I've found any kind of required pop ups from a browser can be a little troublesome on mobile devices (they often just go AWOL).

This can include,

• Are you sure you want to continue?
• Read these terms and conditions.
• Select a date from this calendar

Tread carefully - and always check these.

The catch with responsive design

Yeah - there was bound to be one, wasn't there?  This approach significantly reduces risk of problems in responsive websites, but it's no guarantee.  Indeed some mobile phones take a system like Android and tailor particular features, so it's hard and expensive to exhaustively test upfront.  This risk has to be known to both yourself and your client.

Furthermore, because responsive design uses newer features of HTML, it means that much older browsers and devices really don't handle the page very well.  You might want to consider that on old, out of scope browsers/devices that it at least fails gracefully with a "your browser does not support this website" error message.

Some common sense ticket items

Finally some common sense things to consider before we wrap up ...

Health and safety

Some testers are really keen to get into mobile testing.  I actually really find it a pain.  The screens are much smaller, it requires data entry just with your thumbs, you tend to hunch over the device.

This is a recipe for repetitive strain injury.  Try and mix up mobile testing with browser testing, and make sure you're taking regular breaks.

Keep them safe and keep them secret

Make sure they're locked away when not in use, though have a couple of keys to where they're kept with your team.  You just don't want them walking away.  Lock and count them in every night.

You drop it you bought it?

It's inevitable that one is going to get dropped.  What then?  Look into getting them added and listed to your building insurance.  If you can't make it clear what will happen should any damage occur.





Breaking news ...

I ran this article by Stephen Janaway - he's someone whose articles I really respect and look to when learning in the mobile space, and he has a huge amount of experience.

One of the great things about writing an article like this is that it puts down everything you know, and sometimes what you find is there's something you didn't know.  And sure enough ...

So, I'd never really though about using Chrome Developer Tools as an early form of testing - so I can't really explore here, but it might be a topic for a follow-up blog.