Who cares about VQA?
Does it really matter if your application is pixel-perfect, if it works? If the button does the right thing, so what if it has the wrong font or spacing? I’ve heard developers ask questions like this. Is visual QA (VQA) crucial? I’ve wondered the same myself, at times.
I’ve also seen the mess that comes from not attending to those little VQA details.
Consistency — beauty, even — in an application’s appearance lends it trustworthiness and reliability. Customers might not even consciously notice that something is off, but they might feel uneasy just the same. If a company is sloppy about their own application, their own corporate image, I would wonder if they are being careful with my data, with security, or with their product?
Typos, grammar mistakes, and spelling errors are analogous. If I make just one error in several paragraph’s, like adding an apostrophe where one doesn’t belong, you might let that slide. After a while tho it starts too add up and your going to think im not being very carefull, with my writeing. Maybe you understood the message despite the errors, but the errors were still there to exert their influence.
If a stakeholder is insisting that you address details that may seem nit-picky, I encourage you to consider the importance of a polished end result. Or if you hear other developers grumbling fix things that don’t affect the functionality, perhaps remind them that the customer might still be affected even if the application’s capabilities are not.
Have you had to choose between releasing later to clean up VQA issues, or releasing sooner without the issues addressed? How did you handle that? Did you meet with resistance from your team?
