This position paper proposes a model for choosing how to communicate heuristics in a meaningful, usable and accessible manner. The model is a matrix of nine shapes, where we define ‘shape’ as a combination of the heuristic’s format and its directiveness. Examining heuristics used in UX and software testing practices, we found a variety of formats and levels of directiveness. We discuss these shapes with example heuristics from UX, software testing, and everyday life. We present the outcome from a pilot of the model in one specific context. The shape of a heuristic may contribute to its understandability and usefulness in specific contexts, while different contexts may necessitate different ways of communicating heuristics. This includes considering the effect that the shape of a heuristic has on its accessibility and inclusion, suggesting that shape may be one important aspect of heuristics’ design and evaluation.

Software testers are an integral part of software development teams, and consequently need to understand from different perspectives the project entrusted to them.While developers might be required to understand a particular module or area of specialisation within a project, testers' comprehension requirements are more far-reaching [1].Gaining insights into how testers fare in different comprehension tasks is useful because it sheds light on how we could potentially support the efforts of the testing community.This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment involving 15 professional software testers.Using NASA Task Load Index as our instrument of choice, we asked participants to carry out eight comprehension and application tasks across four categories (test case design, test automation, bug finding and adequacy analysis).We then analysed the data collected to seek to understand the effect of different task types, education level and participant experience on effectiveness and cognitive workload.The results suggest that, while experience is a key element in successful task completion, this is also influenced by task type.In fact, the more experienced persons actually tended to fare worse than their less experienced counterparts in certain tasks (namely, test case design and adequacy analysis).Level of education had no significant bearing on successful task completion but differences in cognitive workload could be observed for both experience and education-level variables.

Software testing is widely perceived to be the main activity in the software development process that provides confidence in the quality of a product prior to release.However, the term software testing itself provokes a multitude of different definitions and opinions as to the nature of the profession, the role of software testers and the utility of different processes and tools that come with the territory [1][2].We argue that in order for researchers to effectively study the field and contribute to its progress, a consensus first needs to be reached about the entity being studied.In this paper we present an empirical study based on the modified Delphi card sort method involving four cohorts of testers in Malta and London.The result of this study is a consolidated consensus-based mental model outlining how software testers perceive their profession.This mental model can be used to align any future research efforts and tool development with testers' own perception of their context.

Information Anxiety is defined as "stress caused by the inability to access, understand, or make use of information necessary for employees to do their job".Even though it is in itself an intangible phenomenon, it is widely acknowledged and has been linked to impaired decision-making ability, information withdrawal, information avoidance, burnout and other health issues.The ICT industry is acknowledged to be a fully fledged knowledge industry.That is to say that its workers are mainly tasked with creating, understanding, applying and distributing knowledge as part of their day-to-day job.The industry is also characterised by disruptive innovations, continuously changing technologies and customers who constantly change their mind about what they want systems to do.In this paper, we present the results of a study which tracked 18 participants for a period of one month in order to investigate the presence of information anxiety in the Maltese ICT industry.Our results indicate that information anxiety is present in nontrivial levels amongst our cohort of participants, with information overload being the predominant cause.Also, participants working in a quality assurance (QA) function are more exposed to the phenomenon as well as being exposed to a wider variety of sources of anxiety than developers.Experience is also shown to be a factor with participants being less prone to symptoms of information overload as they gain more experience in the field.

Exploratory software testing is an activity which can be carried out by both untrained and formally trained testers. In this paper, we propose using Human Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques to carry out a study of exploratory testing strategies used by the two groups of testers. This data will be used to make recommendations to companies with regards to the mix of skills and training required for testing teams.

This paper shows the need of a framework which can be used to measure the functionality delivered by electronic commerce (e-commerce) systems. Such a framework would be helpful in areas such as cost prediction, effort estimation, and so on. The paper goes on to propose such a framework, based on the established methods of function points and object points.