Posts Tagged ‘evaluation’

Product quality: belief or proof?

January 25th, 2010, by Colin Walls | Permalink | No Comments

There are two aspects of any product that give me great pleasure: good design and quality of manufacture. This applies to just about anything: a pair of shoes, a car, a house , a piece of software … Assessing both these parameters can be hard. A pair of shoes must look good, be comfortable to wear and last well; this takes time to evaluate. A car needs to be enjoyable to ride in, drive well and offer long term reliability and economy; again, not something to be measured quickly. A house can be even more difficult, as you need to live in it through a full year of seasons at least and, even then, you may still be evolving the way that you use the space, which will establish how good the original design was.

In many ways, software can be the most difficult product of all to assess, as programs represent the most complex “machines” mankind has ever produced … (more…)

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Seeing is believing

September 7th, 2009, by Colin Walls | Permalink | No Comments

I am a difficult customer. When I am buying something, I want see exactly what I am getting for my money. The words of the salesperson and the blurb on packages just does not convince me - I have been caught out too many times.

Recently my daughter was after a charger for her iPod, as she was traveling without a computer and “needed” her iPod. What she wanted was a mains plug which has a USB socket on the back. Easy, there are lots of those on the market. I even have two on the shelf in front of me. But neither of these work with her iPod [a current generation Nano]. Some research on the Internet showed that this problem is very well known. We went into a shop and found a charger which said “suitable for all iPod models” on the pack. I enquired whether this really meant ALL. I was assured that it did and the guy asked if we wanted to try it. The charger worked perfectly and he made a sale. [Email me if you want to know what product it was.]
If only it were that straightforward with software …

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About The Colin Walls Blog

This blog is a discussion of embedded software matters - news, comment, technical issues and ideas, along with other passing thoughts about anything that happens to be on my mind.

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