In a previous article published on this site, "Testing the Bold and the Beautiful" (May 2001), the author received many thoughtful comments and questions about the importance of aesthetics in software. This paper was inspired in part from those questions. It clarifies the difference between aesthetic testing and usability testing. The paper makes the business case for "beauty testing" and argues that an ugly UI can undermine the bottom line. It offers methods and a survey-template for successful aesthetic testing. The paper concludes with a list of "Facts and Myths, Dos and Don'ts."

Whether you are concerned that your job is going to be shipped to India or feeling safe that the outsourcing craze is calming down, the reality remains that we live in a global economy and more and more companies are beginning to explore ways to creating software in distributed and multicultural environments. The Web and the open source movement have demonstrated that it is not only possible to create quality software in a highly distributed and decentralized manner, but also that it "makes business sense" to do so. This article presents a pragmatic framework for introducing Agile practices and tools to onshore-offshore distributed teams.

Ron Jeffries and Chet Hendrickson join Bob Payne in this podcast recorded at the 2006 Simple Design and Testing Conference. We invite you to take a listen to their impression of the conference as a whole, and the current state of software development and testing.

When a man suffered a cardiac arrest on a ski slope, a medley of medical personnel from different countries and backgrounds mustered together to take charge of the man's health. Despite language barriers, they were successful in stabilizing the man. While this incident may seem to have little to do with software development, Clarke Ching sees that the makeshift emergency team shared specific characteristics found in all strong software development teams. In this column, he details these characteristics and how applying them can turn your team into a more successful team no matter how dissimilar individual teammates may be.