How do you communicate a testing protocol?
I got a spec for a testing protocol this week. My job was to read it and then string together a number of screens so testers could click through a work-flow. It was basically a spread sheet with a line (vaguely) describing which screen a user was on, followed by a line (vaguely) describing what the CTAs were be.
My first reaction was to realize that there are about 60 different screens we developed and what someone calls a particular screen might not match up with how it is presented in our āplaybookā, which might not match what developers or designers are calling it. Everyone has a different mental model of how the whole thing works, based upon what they may have worked on, or domain knowledge. So my first task was to then actually get everyone to commit to what specific file they were referencing. Time wasted, IMO.
This just seems like a really inefficient way of communicating this information, from researchers, to designers, to developers. Are there tools out there to better present this information? Or, even weāre going to stick with a spreadsheet, is there a better way to communicate what I received?
I should mention Iām a programmer/implementer, and not a researcher, but Iām trying to learn more about the field and offer what I can from the perspective of a programmer.