Ard is a software tester from the Netherlands and is working for OrangeCrest. He calls himself a Qualisopher which stands for someone “who loves truth and wisdom and at the same time is decisive to improve man and his environment” . This means he is interested in the world around us, to see what he can learn and subsequently apply in software testing. That is one of the reason why Ard tells stories in books and at (test) conferences such as EuroStar, Expo:QA, TestWarez, TestingCup, Romanian Testing Conference. Besides working in IT he is also active as a sport (volleyball) coach and chair of the music school in his town.
For sure you’ve encountered nudging in your life and the main question is, were you aware of it? For example that a sticker of a fly in a urinal saved a lot of money in cleaning toilets because men had something to aim for or positive social normative messages such as ‘9 of 10 of your colleagues did fill out the acceptance criteria for user stories” ;- ). These examples show exactly the way nudging should work: apply simple adjustments so that people will change their behavior in a positive way.
I’ve been walking with the thought that also testers should be able to use nudging too, but how? The only way to find out is to do a workshop together to see what kind of nudging we can use. The workshop will start with an introduction of how nudging works and it is used around us: this knowledge and inspiration will be the starting point for using the creativity of the attendees. In groups, we will work on recognizable cases that we encounter as testers. The workshop is about having fun, creative and using each other knowledge to improve testing around you.