Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

Love it -

How about this as an alternative: The user is stuck in a very (corporate/government/sluggish) environment. I will review your site/app from a major bank's / federal government's offices and report back!

Or maybe this: The user is a 65 year old dad whose son doesn't come around often enough to ensure his father hasn't installed countless malware that he blames "internet" on. I will go to my dad's house and use his computer to browse your site/app and report back!

This list really should get longer, HN, I turn to you.

View on HN

The user is a woman: standard UX testing, only you're forced to confront your own preconceptions for having assumed it would be otherwise.

Citation needed.

> The user is a woman

Nothing changes.

Downvoters are sexist.

The user is tripping balls on LSD. Will report back on how scary it was, how unexpectedly it worked, how tedious and unappealing the actions to do were, and how the colours sounded like.

The user has cats: what your site looks like just on the corners of the screen (or maybe even one or two corners) while random keys are being pressed by paws.

The classic "How does your site perform if your cat is standing on the F11 key" test

With the standard, classic result: "poorly".

Lately my 3 year old's favourite passtime is to come sit on my lap while I'm trying to work (or surfing HN or whatever) and ask, "Can I press this key?" (Shift? "Uh, ya, sure.") "Can I press this key?" (Ctrl? "Sure.") Some of them make you think though. (F2? What will that do in this context?)

It's not among my most productive times, but it's fun. :)

Your cat is talking at 3 years old? Very advanced!

I told my 2 and a half year old that the "S" key is the snake key, so now he always asks "can i press snake?". He's also found a second snake (the 5 key).

When he finds the '@', he's gonna be delighted!

I let my 3 year old play with my laptop at times, by giving her a full screen xterm running bash in a separate tab on my tiling window manager. She mostly likes to type the letters she knows (her initial, my initial, uncle's initial etc) but it's surprising how often she manages to Ctrl-R or Windows-Shift-3 or some other combo that makes things go haywire.

I hope she's not called Rebecca Mary-Rachel Ford ...

And has a cousin named Star.

Haha! Fortunately, her initials are not all in ASCII, so it's not gone wrong yet. But true, I should set her up with a user account that doesn't have write access on anything.

Install sl(1) and teach your 3 year old to type s l ENTER :-)

Boy, am I going to regret installing this in about an hour.

AWS failed this test hard for me a couple weeks ago. A cat walking across my keyboard terminated an EC2 instance. Lesson learned: no cats on the desk when logged into mission critical software :)

The user is a bored developer working in a dead end job, they will either - look at it for 1 second and say "meh", close it and go back to reddit or if they like the colours say "cool" click around a bit for 5 seconds, close it and go back to reddit.

Nah, that one already exists: http://fivesecondtest.com/

( I may be making assumptions about the user base, but I think "bored developer" is a reasonably safe bet...)

My first thought was "this already exists, it's called HN/reddit/producthunt/etc" then I realised most of the times I upvote items just because they have a lot of upvotes/comments.

Side project idea: HN/PH where the ratings are hidden. This way you still get the curation bit, but people are free to make up their own minds about your website.

Reddit already supports this for upvotes; some subs hide the upvote/downvote numbers to prevent exactly this kind of thoughtless pile-on. I wish more did. I think it's usually "for the first <duration> after posting", but I presume it could be made permanent.

User found you on Google. He intends to visit another 100 sites like yours to find what he wants, and therefore will only spend 3 to 10 seconds on your site.

Funnily enough, this is the least realistic of all these suggestions :)

Same for StumbleUpon, except the visit time is between 0.3 and 1.0 seconds.

How about, user is using a screen reader or some other accessibility aid.

Can you make it more hilarious?

Twitch Plays Navigate This Website Via A Screen Reader?

There was a Twitch Plays Internet Explorer once....

The user in a 3rd World country and speaks (reads) very limited English. With 3rd World internet and an $80 computer.

There was a poster a few weeks back on here offering to test your web app on all the major ISPs/carriers in Dar es Salaam: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9133792

The user is not there - I will review your website as if I had never seen it before and don't intend to

Similar to "The User is Drunk ... with friends, at a bar, not at home on the couch alone on the internet."

Product/service reviews by not-so-tech-oriented parents or retirees could be quite entertaining.

You can't complain when they send you a .docx file.

My school counselor send scholarships in those.

Few years ago asked my mom to send me a few photos from the family christmas - they showed up in my email inserted into a word doc.

This is how some of my clients send me screenshots. :(

This calls for a Clippy comeback. "I see you're trying to put your wedding photos into a document. Do you want me to show you how to use your e-mail client?".

I have one pair of clients who send me wireframes produced in Excel, sometimes with screenshots of LinkedIn (which serves as the inspiration for most of their ideas) pasted in. I find it quite amusing and genuinely like the clients as people, if not really as clients, so I don't have the heart to tell them how silly it is. (I did once try and get them to use Balsamiq, but it didn't end well.)

> I have one pair of clients who send me wireframes produced in Excel

There are no limits to Excel.

I've been sent floor plans in Excel where the spreadsheet has been zoomed out really really far, each square representing less than a square meter in a 20000+ square meter building.

Or banking applications where the terminal input screen (the backend is in COBOL) and batch reports are designed in (and print to) perfect square cell Excel files, one character per cell.

This goes through a very traditional corporate waterfall testing process, and everyone finds it normal.

I've had screenshots inserted into PowerPoint presentations before. That was a low point.

Sadly, I've had that a number of times too. People can be quite inventive, and painful.

There is no user.

The user reviews your site and writes HN-like comments about it.

The user is drunk and high.

I want cannabis-inspired feedback.

The user skipped his ADHD meds today.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com