In order to build better digital products, I think we could all learn a thing or two from QA. Great Quality Assurance managers are also usability experts who leave no stone unturned in their search for the best experience for a product. They try to use the product in wacky ways just to see if they can break it. They ask questions like, “Should this really work this way? Wouldn’t it be better if it worked this way?” They think in a very analytical and technical way.

How can we bring some of the QA process into the up-front work of user experience design? One of the most difficult tasks when you are designing a product is to get your head in a place where the end product is already built, and imagining all of the different scenarios that the user will go through. I can’t tell you how many times as a QA manager I went back to the wireframes only to realize in frustration that “Oh, that wasn’t thought of at all”. So maybe it’s taking that wireframe and creating a detailed functional spec, but there’s a step missing where UX designers are not turning over every stone so QA managers need to at the end.

And at the end of the process when the product is built is when changes are the most costly, so we need to think of everything we possibly can upfront. I think that prototypes can definitely help this because it forces you to deal with a product that is physically built, not just a flat wireframe. Also let’s work with project managers to ensure we’re part of the entire schedule and to some degree involved at the end when our projects go to QA, so we can learn what happens when we go from design to the “real world”.