Curated Articles Wrapup for August 2012

[rickscott]

• Who Our Users Actually Are (2 Aug 2012): We often have an unrealistic mental image of our users, even though we are technology users ourselves. Society's norms of what a "technology user" looks like are flat-out wrong, and we need to get past them.
• Hero Culture or Crisis Culture? (6 Aug 2012): We often talk about avoiding a "hero culture", but I think this is a misnomer. The real problem is a culture that encourages a steady stream of crises, each of which requires heroic intervention to solve.
• Upgrade Your Wetware for Better Testing (9 Aug 2012): Testing is a thinking activity. I'm fascinated by how we can try to make our minds "think better" in order to become better testers.
• Learning by Osmosis (13 Aug 2012): Few of us get as many formal learning opportunities as we might like -- conferences, seminars, and so forth. If we pay attention to how we spend our time, we can try to take in a little learning and some new ideas every day.
• When Unencrypted USB Keys Go Missing (28 Aug 2012): Elections Ontario recently lost two unencrypted USB keys containing personal information on as many as four million electors. Good security policies alone won't prevent losses like this -- you also have to ensure they're actually followed.