What fun it is to type "household appliance" as a keyword for my testing rant today. My boyfriend brought home a Roomba iRobot for us to use in our new house. Not only do I enjoy shouting, "Release the Robot!" but I also love watching it work. It also doubles as a cat toy/cat torture device, depending on which cat. The younger cat looks interested, while the old one looks horrified.

How it works
It stumbles along trying to find the boundary of a room. When it runs into a wall (imaginary as created by the false wall signal or a real wall or object), it bounces a bit as to not damage either participant in the collision, and then goes in another direction. If it encounters significant dirt, it spins in one spot for a moment before moving on.

Error Handling
We did encounter one error where it got stuck under our dining room buffet hutch. The two previous times it was stuck it was able to unstick itself easily by trying different angles. However, this time it really was stuck. It alerted me to the situation by making a sound so I could manually unstick it.

Usability
On the down side, it takes much longer than a human to vacuum a room of equal size. On the up side, the floor is really clean when it is finished, it is fun to watch, and I can do something else while it cleans the floor. Plus, it is fun to use and I think of it as my "little buddy". It is easy to remove the bin to clean the dirt out. It is easy to tell the battery state from the lights on the top of the vacuum. It even finds it's own charger when you are finished if you ask it to.

Learning Curve
Any person of reasonable intelligence willing to read the manual who has electricity and some D batteries for the fake wall can use this thing to clean floors. Now, in all fairness, repairing it would be difficult. You have to be reasonable about what limits this system can handle. I'm not going to expect it to vacuum up huge items or anything wet.


Why is my test automation not like this? How can I make it a trusty sidekick, which while it isn't perfect, is honestly useful and enjoyable for me to use? I think that the key is, I didn't create the iRobot. I didn't program it. I just use it. I love using it. It works very well for the purpose intended. I think if I tried to get it to do dishes I'd be less satisfied. The key for me is getting a tool that is already for the correct purpose and using it well. I think my attitude towards automation will improve vastly if I can do that. Not being good at writing code isn't a crime. It doesn't mean that I'm not a great tester.