Category: TouchXPRT development process

Putting the TouchXPRT pedal to the metal

on October 19, 2012

Since we announced TouchXPRT early this year, we’ve been following a typical benchmark development path. We started with the most important question—“What are people likely to do with a touch-based Windows 8 device?”—and built from there. We looked at what people are doing now with iOS- and Android-based devices. We worked with early Windows 8 units. We studied app stores. We spoke with members of the development community. And so on. When we were done studying, we moved to coding.

We’re making great progress, but something has been nagging at us: When Windows 8 tablets and other devices ship next week, there just won’t be much in the way of tools for measuring their performance when running Windows 8 apps. Sure, you may be able use standard benchmarks to assess the performance of typical desktop applications, but that won’t tell you how the devices will perform with tablet apps.

So, we’ve decided to put the pedal to the metal and provide everyone in our development community with a special treat. Sometime next week, before Windows 8 ships, we plan to release a sneak preview of TouchXPRT, the TouchXPRT 2013 Community Preview 1 (CP1).

CP1, as its name makes clear, is not the final TouchXPRT release. It is, though, a useful tool for beginning to measure Windows 8 device performance. It is also a great way for everyone in the community to see the current state of our thinking and to provide us feedback—rather than read a design spec, you can actually run this version of the tool and see what you think! (If you would like to read the informal design spec, check out http://www.hdxprt.com/forum/touchxprt2013cp1.php .)

To make the tool easier to evaluate and more useful to all of us, we’re also taking two more unusual steps:

1. We’re not putting any publication restrictions on this preview release. Test at will, and publish your findings.

2. We’re releasing the source code to all community members. If you’re curious about not just what we’re doing but how we’re doing it, you can find out.

We hope these steps will speed acceptance of TouchXPRT 2013 and foster more and faster feedback. Releasing a preview version is more work, because we have to do much of the work of a software release and on less-than-final code, but we believe the value to our community justifies the effort.

Next week, when we release CP1, I’ll go over more details, the known limitations, and how you can get us your feedback—feedback we very much want.

Between now and then, we’ll be readying CP1 for your use.

Bill

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Posted in Performance testing on tablets, Touch-based computing, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT results |

TouchXPRT update

By Bill Catchings

on September 13, 2012

We have been spending a lot of our energy (and blog space) on HDXPRT 2012 over the last few weeks. We have not, however, forgotten about TouchXPRT.

As we discussed in the past, TouchXPRT will be a new benchmark designed for touch-based devices like tablets and touch-capable Ultrabooks. It will incorporate apps and scenarios tailored to touch-based environments and devices. The initial version will run on the Windows 8 environment formerly known as Metro.

Our current plan is to release an informal design overview later this month. We then hope to have a preview version of TouchXPRT available to community members in October. Depending upon feedback, we will work on improvements and fixes through January with a release in February. We will have more details in the forums and in blog entries over the next few weeks.

As always, we need feedback and input from the community. If you are not currently a member, now is the time to join so you can participate in specifying and developing TouchXPRT. We are excited about both the benchmark and this emerging product space. We hope you are, too!

I do have one thing to mention about HDXPRT 2012. Please remember that we are going to do a Webinar next week (Tuesday, 9/18 at 2:00pm ET). We plan to discuss HDXPRT 2012 and have plenty of time for questions from attendees. We’d love for you to join, learn more about the benchmark, and give us your thoughts and feedback. We will send out more details to community members in an email later this week.

Bill

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Posted in HDXPRT Webinar, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT development process, TouchXPRT release cycle |

Thinking about TouchXPRT scenarios

By Bill Catchings

on March 23, 2012

Last week I looked at the roles in TouchXPRT that would make sense on a touch-based device like a tablet. I suggested seven possible ones. The next step is to create usage models and scenarios based on those roles. In turn, we would need to develop simple apps to do these things. To get the ball rolling, here are some activity and scenario ideas we came up with for one of the roles—consuming and manipulating media.

After doing email and reading books, this is one of the main things I do on my iPad. Originally, in this role I mostly showed pictures or videos (especially of my grandsons) to people. (Yes, people do hide when they see me coming with my iPad in hand saying, “You gotta see this!”) As the iPad and its apps have grown, I’ve found myself doing some cleaning up of photos, video, and even sound directly on the iPad. I think a person in this role is not necessarily an expert in media, but like most of us enjoys playing with media. So, the person might do something like scale/trim a video or add a nice cross-dissolve between two video clips. Maybe the person would even create a video montage by combining stock travel footage with personal video clips. Beyond simply rotating and cropping photos, the person might add some stock preset effects like making them sepia toned, adding titles, or creating a postcard. The person might create a slideshow based on a set of travel photos and use some visual or audio effects. They might also add sound by manipulating audio clips. Based upon these kinds of usages, the apps would include some of the features found in apps like iMovie, Instagram, SnapSeed, PhotoGene, iPhoto, and GarageBand.

What do you think? How do those activities match your usage of touch-based devices? What would you add, subtract, or change? Do you have suggestions for the other roles? Thanks for your help in defining what TouchXPRT will be.

Bill

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Posted in Let us know your thoughts, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT development process |

TouchXPRT update

By Bill Catchings

on March 16, 2012

We have been busy the last couple of months with TouchXPRT. We have been investigating and trying out things on Windows 8 Metro. While we are excited by the possibilities for a benchmark in that space, the task is a bit daunting.

The first key question is what are people likely to do with a device using touch-based environment like Metro? The best way to answer that is to look at what people are currently doing with IOS- and Android-based devices. We have been playing with those as well as some units running the Metro beta. To create an initial list of roles or usage categories, we spent some time looking at what is available on the iTunes App Store, the Android Play store, and the Windows Store. Here, in no particular order, is the list of uses we came up with:

Consume and manipulate media – Touch devices are heavily used for consuming media (music, photos, and video), but now are being used for some simple manipulation tasks like adding simple visual effects to video, mixing and changing audio, and enhancing photos.
Browse the Web – Touch devices are becoming one of the main ways people consume Web content, both normal Web pages and specially crafted “mobile” pages. Touch devices are what I use to find the phone number for the nearest takeout Chinese.
Watch video for entertainment – Through movie apps like Netflix and TV network apps, touch devices (especially tablets) are becoming a major force in this area.
Play games – This is obviously something folks do on their touch devices. As best we can tell, no consumer device can ship without Angry Birds!
Interact with others – Through apps like Facebook and Foursquare, touch devices are becoming a big way that people interact with each other.
Get news and information – Another big area is general news and information, including things like stock quotes and weather.
Use utilities – This is a broad category—there are a ton of utilities for doing everything from moving files to backing up data.

That list covers a lot of ground and some of the areas, like games, would be particularly difficult to benchmark. We thought, however, that it would be best to get everything out and then figure out what to tackle first. The big challenges we face are the lack of apps available for Metro and having no good ability to script or drive applications. Our current thinking is to write some minimal sample apps that mimic common apps out there. These would not be complete apps, but would do some of the key functions. Then, we could build scenarios around these functions. That seems like the best approach to completing something in a timely fashion. Initially, we would aim for two or three of those areas and then add others over time.

As always, we need your feedback. Let us know what you think about the list of uses and the approach in general. And, let us know if you can help with any of the sample app development. Thanks!

Bill

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Posted in Touch-based computing, TouchXPRT, TouchXPRT development process, Uncategorized |

Category: TouchXPRT development process

Putting the TouchXPRT pedal to the metal

TouchXPRT update

Thinking about TouchXPRT scenarios

TouchXPRT update

Check out the other XPRTs: