Memetics and a testing schema

In my previous post about a challenge that Michael Bolton gave I was trying to use past experience as a helper to solve a current problem. (not always a good thing - especially in isolation) I then thought of the times that past experiences have helped me when testing. I feel that experience helps me a lot when testing, but experience is too wide or too vague to be meaningful to me or any reader. I therefore have been trying to dig deeper into experience and try and explain what it means to me and how it helps me.

I started thinking about test ideas.

Definition: idea for testing something - see http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/43

How test ideas might come from previous test ideas, partial previous test ideas, a fragment of a test idea, a fusion of previous test ideas or fragments.

This can also apply to a method.

Definition: Method: a way of doing something; an idea or ideas that specify behavior.

There are times when I might be testing or thinking about how to test something and the memory of a test, test idea or method pops into my head. How does that happen?

Isn't this simple?, what I've observed or encountered previously might help me in the future. Ok, but what about other peoples test methods or test ideas? (What I'm meaning here is I quite like finding out how other people have got on with the testing that they have been doing, and also looking at bug, issues that they have raised - erm I quite like trawling through the bug database

Note: What I'm not saying is that every test should use previous tests.

Having said that the test ideas and test methods of previous testing may be useful to form new test ideas and test methods based on the thought of those previous ones to perform new testing.

This led me to a few internet searches and I stumbled across memetics. I am quite excited by memetics - but I'm still a bit skeptical because it is just a theory.

Ok so what's memetics? Well the crux of memetics is the idea of ideas that spread between people.
The wikipedia definition is this: 'Ideas, behaviors or styles that spread from person to person within a culture' - Wikipedia

Why am I excited by this? Firstly I have discovered a theory about ideas - yay, and secondly it has testing connotations. Ideas around a product or function concept, an implementation and execution. CIO ideas, stakeholder ideas, programmer ideas, project manager ideas, tester ideas, customer ideas that spread. Ok so groups of people might share the same meme (share the same idea - which may be good - on the same page, or bad - groupthink.) Or people may have memes only within their own group - one I came across recently was a customer meme - the next version will be faster (or the meme that the current version is slow).

Another thing that sprung to mind (or memed) was a session I attended with Rachel Davies at ACCU2010. One person made up a story and wrote it down on a piece of paper and handed to the person on their left, the person on the left had to draw what the first person had wrote and then pass it to the next person on their left who then had to draw another picture based on the picture passed to them and so on. It was an interesting session (particularly as I had to draw first from the words of the first person - a car crashing into the central reservation of a motorway ermm and my car drawing was interestingly basic) I think this may be an example of mutation of a meme.

In my research I found the following podcast which gives an introduction to memetics:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/radical-nlp-mythology-spirituality/id263470927
#14 Introduction to Memetics

In the podcast, the book by Chip and DanHeath called 'Made to stick' was mentioned with 8 criteria for ideas which was implied to apply to successful memes.

1. Simplicity - memorable
2. Unexpectedness - Emotional energy
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotions
6. Stories
7. Habitat
8. Stability

I keep loooking at this list and keep thinking about bug and test reports.

I also keep thinking about Certifications and false memes..

The 'Velcro theory of memory 'also gets mentioned whereby we have an underlying schema in which we use to match ideas, so when I'm thinking about previous experiences am I pattern matching attributes of my testing schema against a current experience. Yikes a bit deep...but there could be advantages to having a big testing schema to match against couldn't there? and also to weed out crap...

One of the big things I am taking out of memetics is disinfecting from bad memes

Some of the innoculations suggested are the following:

1. 'Knowing who you are and what you stand for'
2. Having a breadth of experience so you know whether to accept or filter out ideas.

When I think about these innoculations I immediately think about the 'Schools of Testing' (oh dear I'm not sure I want to enter this debate) http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/565

I do think it is important however for two reasons 1. Formulating your testing schema 2. For filtering out memes from other schools.

Dr Susan Blackmore also adds the following:

'Meditation and mindfulness can be thought
of as meme-weeding techniques, designed to let go of words, logical thoughts and other memetic constructs and leave only immediate sensory experience'

Well I have discovered a theory about ideas - memetics but I have also discovered the work of Dr Susan Blackmore. http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/

I will follow up with Dr Susan Blackmore and meditation in another blog post.

Initial Reading:

The Lifecycle of Memes: http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Cultural/Memetics/memecycle.html
Dr Susan Blackmore: http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
Memetics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memetics