Similar : – having a likeness or resemblance

When I searched for the word ‘similar’ on the website http://dictionary.reference.com , I was shown the below result. Well it’s not that I was not knowing the meaning of the word, but just wanted to see if any new context has been attached to the word. Thankfully I am not out dated.
Similar
How it happened: I was browsing online to buy a book ‘iWoz’ on the Flipkart website, searched for it and got the result in positive. Nice! To people who don’t know Flipkart, it’s an online book buying shop launched in 2007 but has gained popularity recently due to it’s nice organized structure, easy payment system, good customer Service. Now when I searched for the book, in addition to the book result, it also displayed a section ‘Purchase Similar Books’. The books listed under that heading forced me to look out for the meaning of ‘similar’, it was show confusing! You must be guessing what all books were displayed, let me show you the snapshot. Take a look at it and let me know if you can find any "’similarity’ or ‘resemblances’ in the books displayed below.
iWoz ? Bounce ? Personal Horoscope ? DRDO ? Computer Networks = (WTF !)
Similar_1
Being a Tester I can only say that the algorithm written to figure out the “Similar” book is wrong, because this seems to be a feature wrongly implemented rather than a bug in the feature.

Comments

  1. SamuelAugust 09, 2010

    In my experience, sections such as the 'similar section' is populated by tags or some description that has been attached to the book you had wanted to purchase.

    So I am guessing for this functionality to work properly, when books are being uploaded for sale, categories (e.g computing, music, arts) would be added to books, so that when you are viewing a particular book, other books that are in the section or category would be displayed in the 'Purchase similar books' section.

    Saying that it would be nice to know the business rules that have been used to populate the 'Purchase similar books' section because as a user it obviously hasn't helped you in any way .... but as a tester, i don't think we are in position to conclude its a feature wrongly implemented until we know what the requirement/business rule are ... it might just be as a result of 'wrong requirements' or requirements that hasn't provided any business value

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nishant VermaAugust 09, 2010

    Samuel, I just used some basics of Exploratory Testing. My opinion that the feature is wrongly implemented was solely based on the application behavior which doesn't suffice "Section" heading.

    Ideally when a feature is proposed, we should not just blindly accept it. Tester should not just limit themselves to testing. They can also look into usability and suggest improvements/suggestions.

    Thanks for your comments and feedback ! :)

    Thanks,
    Nishant

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousAugust 15, 2010

    Do you do freelancing ?

    John B.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousFebruary 28, 2012

    Books may not be tagged appropriately -

    ReplyDelete

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