Monday
Jul272009
Building an F-150
Monday, July 27, 2009 at 8:56AM
I went to Ford Motor Company's website today to build and price an F-150. While I was there I found numerous issues with their site, including errors for links with no valid destination and a rather annoying Web 2.0 app that I had to close and restart no fewer than three times to get to a completed F-150. For whatever reason, it stopped accepting inputs three different times. There was also an issue with a gigantic cursor blinking on the left-side of the screen and some fields that disappears and reappeared randomly. And if you tried to navigate using your browser's history, you'd get some interesting partially-loaded pages with error messages and you'd never get redirected to a page where the app would try to reload.
While I was doing this testing, I tried to discern a lesson or two for the QuickTestingTips audience. I couldn't. I wasn't trying to test. I was trying to build a truck. The software just didn't work . It wasn't even close to working. If I were Ford, I would be embarrassed. I'm pricing a $40,000 item, and I can't even use the online tool you provide me to learn about the product and it's options!
After I finally got my truck built and submitted to the dealer for pricing, I got a couple of follow up emails confirming the submission. That was about the only thing that went well with my experience. As I reflected on if there were possible testing lessons I could draw from this experience, I came up with nothing. The interface had so many problems it didn't even occur to me to test for possible issues. If I were a tester, I would have spent the entire day just writing up the issues I saw while doing (what I hope is) the happy path.
After building the F-150, I switched over to Toyota's site and built a Tundra. I had a price on the truck I wanted in about five minutes. For $20,000 to $40,000 a truck, you'd think Ford would take some time to get something so simple as an online options builder correct. As for me, I still need to think of today's tip, and I'm no closer to an idea. Perhaps I'll go test a Google app... those always give me interesting ideas. (That's because they don't crash as soon as I start using them.)
While I was doing this testing, I tried to discern a lesson or two for the QuickTestingTips audience. I couldn't. I wasn't trying to test. I was trying to build a truck. The software just didn't work . It wasn't even close to working. If I were Ford, I would be embarrassed. I'm pricing a $40,000 item, and I can't even use the online tool you provide me to learn about the product and it's options!
After I finally got my truck built and submitted to the dealer for pricing, I got a couple of follow up emails confirming the submission. That was about the only thing that went well with my experience. As I reflected on if there were possible testing lessons I could draw from this experience, I came up with nothing. The interface had so many problems it didn't even occur to me to test for possible issues. If I were a tester, I would have spent the entire day just writing up the issues I saw while doing (what I hope is) the happy path.
After building the F-150, I switched over to Toyota's site and built a Tundra. I had a price on the truck I wanted in about five minutes. For $20,000 to $40,000 a truck, you'd think Ford would take some time to get something so simple as an online options builder correct. As for me, I still need to think of today's tip, and I'm no closer to an idea. Perhaps I'll go test a Google app... those always give me interesting ideas. (That's because they don't crash as soon as I start using them.)
Reader Comments (8)
Not sure what your problem was, The F-150 I built went smoothly. Better luck next time geek.
just tried it, used Firefox, No problems.
So . . . the site works as well as their vehicles?
chrome crashes almost immediately
I would be more impressed if screenshots had been taken from a more plausible desktop. IE. Something windows-based like we all use.
I build my own ford truck from ford.com...
It ended up at 39406. I didn't have any trouble in building my truck in Firefox.
Do you use Greasemonkey plugins? There are lots of those for Google and Gmail, written for free by people who would love to have a good tester take it for a spin. I spend a good bit of time with the developer of Gmail Notes, a plugin for annotating Gmail threads, going over problems I've found. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/46226
Hey Geordie, I've not used Greasemonkey, but I will now after taking a look at it. Great tip man!
-Mike