Production and QA

The article, "Phase 4: Production and QA," touches on the last part of publishing a web site with three sections: prepping, building, and testing.

About "Production" part, it explains this below at the end of the article, "

• query your client,
• compose the "Client Spec Sheet,"
• consult on feasibility with the visual designers and the information designer,
• build the Protosite and test functionality,
• receive the graphic templates from the visual designers,
• slice and optimize graphics,
• build HTML templates and integrate light scripting,
• build and populate individual pages,
• integrate complex functionality and backend applications and/or engineering, and
• test."

(Honestly, I have liked to make a list like this above as I have been working on the team project because it usually serves as a reminder of what I have to do, very thankfully.)

What I was impressed more while reading it, however, is "QA," short for quality assurance. Little different from Usability testing, QA testing is part that is definitely one of the most important stage and that is often skipped due to the limitation of time, budget, knowledge of how important it is, and so on. In detail, during the QA testing, many people, including managers or even clients, would track and fix bug. As examples of mistakes in the site, there are

• spelling errors,
• orphaned and rogue links,
• misplace contents,
• broken tables, functional errors,
• browser crashes.

And, of course, they should fix those bugs.

As part of my team project assignments, I have analyzed the competitive websites (http://www.onda.org, http://oneworldjourneys.com/sonoran, http://www.desert-divers.com) these days. Three websites that I picked out as good examples of our project have pretty good layout, dynamic multimedia usages, nice color schemes and so forth. As I have reviewed those websites, I have found some bugs even if they look a lot of money and efforts were devoted. Of course, there are just a few mistakes, such as unloaded photos, little misalignment of articles and background, or unavailable categories. Of course, there are just a few but in comparison to their really good graphic templates and other items, I feel sorry that they are not completed perfectly. If they had realized the importance of QA testing and conducted it before launching the site, it would have looked much better.

I think had better read this article again next quarter so as not to be lost in the team project.