I've got a new job (don't worry, I'll still be doing QAuDHD)!

As part of my onboarding, my manager was asking about how I work best, types of communication that suit me and so on, and it brought me back to a topic I've touched on previously: communication. I've then coupled that with a follow-on from last-weeks section on representation in games, with a quick breakdown of some accessibility best practices.

As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. Thank you for reading/listening! ❤️

P.S I also briefly plug the Sprint course I'm running for IntoGames in October: https://www.intogames.courses/course/qa-testing-david-jenkins-oct⁠

Discount Code (valid until the end of August 2024): DAVIDQALAUNCH

The UK and USA are having a particularly bad time of it at the moment, especially when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Or at least, people's perception of it.

With equal representation of male & female athletes at the Olympics, you might think this is indicative of increasing equity between these two genders, but sadly that's still very much not the case. So called "gender debates" are still aggressively targeting trans women (even though there aren't any taking part - there is a trans man and at least one NB person, but nobody seems to care about that), and gender bias is potentially depriving millions of neurodiverse women around the world of the support they deserve (and need).

The latter is the first topic I'm covering this week, with representation in games (particularly for LGBT+ people) being the second.

As always: please share, drop in comments and let me know your thoughts/suggestions for future topics. Thank you for reading/listening! ❤️

#videogames #qa #autism #adhd #audhd #gamesquality #gamesqa #qaudhd #diversity #edi

Given how hot it's been lately, this latest QAuDHD episode feels especially appropriate.

The main spicy topic this week is about burn-out and why it hits us harder than most. The other topic (less of a link this time around, sorry everyone) is about some additional considerations that often seemed to get overlooked when test planning.

This week, I discuss my personal experiences as someone who supposedly can't do empathy, but in reality empathises too much, and ask the question: are videogames "art"?

Although, spoiler alert, I don't have a good answer!

This week I discuss two deeply philosophical questions that I've had people ask me recently: how neurodivergent is neurodivergent enough and what is “fun”?

Ten episodes! 🥳🎉 Thank you so much to all my readers, listeners and subscribers.

For this exciting milestone I thought it was high time that I actually explained what neurodivergence and QA (in the games industry at least) actually ARE.

This week I talk about masking: what is it and why do people like me do it, as well as imposter syndrome within the industry and how I've coped with it before - and continue to cope with it now!

This week I'll be talking about the "language barrier" that can exist between neurotypical and neurodiverse people and why keeping things fresh for your quality teams is a great way to get the most out of them!

Trigger warning: bad pronunciation of a language I'm still learning!

This week I break down some of what it's like actually living with both autism and ADHD, and how these two distinct parts of my brain sometimes team up to make me awesome and sometimes join forces to make me useless.

I also talk a bit about the "Holy Grail" of games quality through probably the best analogy I've ever thought of!

As you might have guessed, this weeks topics are about verbal communication vs written communication (from my AuDHD perspective) and UX design in videogames.