pertwk Chapter 294 New Product Testing
Chapter 294 New Product Testing
In the development and testing area on the third floor of Xingchen Technology's office building, the lights were on, and the ballasts of the fluorescent lights emitted a faint hum of electricity.
Lingyun pushed open the glass door to the testing area.
There were only three people in the room. David sat at his workstation by the window, with three monitors side by side in front of him. The middle one was lit, displaying an interface that had never appeared in the official version of Star Language. His right hand held the mouse, his index finger hovering over the left mouse button, not touching it.
Eric squatted on the ground, a toolbox spread out beside his knees containing an oscilloscope, a logic analyzer, and several soldering irons that were still inside. He stared at the monitor on the wall—a real-time server load monitoring system, its green waveforms rising and falling smoothly, occasionally punctuated by a sharp spike.
Catherine sat at a long table in the corner, six or seven sheets of printed paper spread out in front of her, each with rough hand-drawn outlines. Some were mostly crossed out, and others had question marks next to them. Her right hand held a pencil, the tip hovering over the paper, not falling.
When Ling Yun walked in, the three of them looked up at the same time.
"Let's begin the stress test," Ling Yun said.
David clicked the mouse.
The screen refreshed, showing a 6x6 grid on the left, each cell a grayish-brown color. On the right were rows of buttons, without text labels, only icons—a shovel, a watering can, and a seed bag.
Eric's server load waveform spiked.
Catherine drew a new question mark on the paper.
David moved the mouse over the seed bag icon and clicked. The cursor changed to the shape of a seed. He moved to the center of the grid and clicked; a small patch of green appeared on the grid.
The server waveform jumped again and then fell back down.
Catherine looked down at the question mark on the paper and didn't move.
David moved the mouse over the kettle icon, clicked it, and the cursor changed to a drop of water. He then clicked on the green area.
There was no change on the grid.
Eric leaned closer to the screen: "What about the latency? What's the approximate data?"
"The front-end rendering is fine," David said. "The back-end write... is around twenty milliseconds."
"The timeframe could probably be reduced even further."
David didn't answer. He moved the mouse over the shovel icon, clicked it, and the cursor changed to a shovel. He then clicked on the green area.
The mesh has been restored to a grayish-brown color.
The server waveform remained stable and normal.
Ling Yun stood behind David without saying a word. His gaze shifted from the screen to the printed paper in front of Catherine, then back to the screen.
"Let's test the concurrency limit," he said.
David opened a hidden console window with an unnamed parameter. He changed the value from "1" to "50" and pressed Enter.
The grid on the screen began to refresh, and a number appeared in the upper left corner: 0/50.
There were no other changes.
David then changed the value to "100".
The grid refreshed, and the number in the top left corner changed to 0/100.
Nothing has changed.
He changed it to "500".
The screen froze for a second. The grid was redrawn, and the number in the top left corner became 0/500. The shovel icon on the right turned gray.
The server waveform spiked sharply, forming a long peak, and then slowly dropped back down.
Eric wrote in his notebook: "500K concurrent users, peak resource usage 42%".
David changed the value back to "1".
The screen has been restored, and the shovel icon has lit up again.
The room was silent for five seconds.
Catherine spoke softly, "President Ling, I've screened the list of beta testers three times."
Ling Yun looked at her.
"We'll only have twenty people in the first batch." Catherine pushed one of the sheets of paper to the side of the table. "They're all college students, twelve boys and eight girls. None of them have ever done software testing before, some don't even know what a bug is, they're all pure non-professionals."
She paused, then continued, "But they are all high-quality users of Xingyu, spending more than four hours online every day. They have their own groups, have decorated their personal spaces, and have sent virtual gifts to their friends."
"Have you sent them a notification?" Ling Yun asked.
"Not yet," Catherine said. "Waiting for your instructions."
Ling Yun didn't speak. He picked up the paper and looked at it for ten seconds.
名单上没有姓名，只有编号。U1到U20，U3后面手写备注：空间访问量全站前1%。U7：建了三个群，成员总数超200。U12：红钻用户，累计充值$47.3。
He put the paper back on the table. "Let's have them start using it tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., and get their feedback on their experience. Once we get the feedback, we'll start working on optimizations."
Catherine nodded and wrote the time on the paper.
David clicked the mouse again. The grid on the screen returned to a six-by-six gray-brown grid, without seeds or watermarks. He minimized the window, and the desktop reverted to Star Language's test environment interface—exactly the same as the official version.
"Today, ICQ sent forty people over from Microsoft," David said without turning his head.
"I learned from inside sources," David said, "that their project, codenamed 'Bluebird,' will launch social features, group chat, levels, and skins within two weeks, all for free."
"Two weeks?" Eric repeated the word.
"They also need to change the front-end architecture," David said. "ICQ's current framework is from 1996, and it still uses polling for user status synchronization. Xingyu's space loading speed is three times faster, and its group chat message latency is only a quarter of theirs."
"So they copy," Catherine said, "not just the features, but the architecture as well."
"They can't possibly copy everything." Eric turned to a new page in his notebook. "It would be good if they could make the interface look similar in two weeks. The backend logic is definitely just old wine in new bottles. I reckon it'll take five seconds to load the space, the group chat messages will be out of order, and the skin will have the wrong layers—"
"Users don't care about the technical details," Ling Yun said calmly. "They only care about how fast it opens, how good it looks, and whether their friends are using it."
He looked at the screen in front of David; the minimized window was still tucked away in the taskbar, its icon a default gray square.
"Therefore, we need to run faster, optimize thoroughly, and be ready to go live at any time!"
Ling Yun looked at Catherine and said, "Tomorrow we'll arrange for full-featured internal testing. We'll not only do user trials, but also comprehensive usage testing." He added, "We'll assign a project testing team of twenty people to test the features."
Catherine closed the folder.
"What about the indicators to observe?"
"Registration conversion, friend referrals, and day-two retention."
Catherine wrote four words on the cover.
"Enable full logging of the server." Ling Yun didn't turn around. "Every click, every refresh, every frame rendered."
Eric nodded and wrote in his notebook: "Full Log".
"The feedback channel should be simple and easy to use," Lingyun said. "Don't set up questionnaires. Let them say whatever they want to say. Type it themselves. Don't guide them to make professional descriptions."
Catherine wrote the fifth word on the cover.
Ling Yun turned around.
"In two weeks, we will complete all testing and optimization to meet the go-live standards," he said.
"Yes, Mr. Ling!" everyone said in unison.
Lingyun told everyone to leave work and not to work overtime anymore.
He stood up, picked up his coat draped over the back of the chair, and walked toward the door.
He paused as he passed the break room. On the whiteboard there was a summary of feedback from last week's user survey, written in Catherine's handwriting:
I want my friends to notice how special I am at first glance.
"It would be great if we could customize that."
"ICQ is so boring, it's like an office software."
"Our class uses Xingyu now, nothing else."
Someone drew two lines under the last line with a red pen.