PlayTime 018: Raster Reveal

We'll gather on Zoom / Miro, on Thursday 29 May at 3pm London time (local time for you) to run RasterReveal.

These exercises are for everyone, for free. Paying Subscribers get to play together every week. This week's is open to subscribers and friends. Subscribers will see joining info below. Pop your name on the Miro board if you're coming.

RasterReveal gives you a picture to play with. As you play with it, you can't help but imagine what's in the picture – and that influences your play. You'll find that you decide what to do next without the need for a distinct decision. It's interesting, as testers, to feel that happening, and to see what happens in your mind as the information coalesces, or as it disperses into mist. It's interesting to feel confirmation and refutation. The exercise allows that, without the cognitive load of testing. You can probably tell that it's one of my favourites – and I'm delighted to say that it turned up kind-of accidentally.

In other news:

• I'm at EuroSTAR in Edinburgh next week, running a double-length "deep dive" interactive session where we'll generate code that passes tests – and we'll consider the weirdness that results. Come say Hello, if you're there. I'm so pleased to be going to EuroSTAR! As an experiment, I'll run next week's Workroom PlayTime from the conference – we'll do a short chunk of my deep dive into exploring generated (and checked) code.
• I've hardly been publishing here, but I'm certainly writing. So I want to put the following topics in front of you: Developing a testing aesthetic for systems that are trained to satisfy us – things LLMs are good at for testers – planning for clarity, not control – lessons (and tools) from factchecking – testing work that needs ephemeral tools – exploratory interfaces – ideas need marshalling, not generating – power laws and other distributions. While I seem only to write productively when I feel the urge, if you urge me to polish one of these I'm more likely to publish it!
• The program for Agile Testing Days is out. I'm delighted to reveal that I'll be doing several things; a scriptless high-wire Testing Transparently keynote with Elizabeth Zagroba, a Crafting Custom Tools tutorial with Bart Knaack and Huib Schoots, and a followup session.
• I'm actively seeking new clients for my teaching and consulting practice – you could drop a meeting into my diary if you'd like to explore some possibilities!

Cheers –

James

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