I came across Draw A Stick Man today. Thought it was cool and liked how it reminded me of Cartoon Tester. Other people on Twitter seemed to like it too.
I tweeted it and Anne-Marie asked if I found any bugs. It took me 2 minutes to find one 
Screenshot is below. I tried drawing stuff that didn’t really go along with what they were asking. I hit a stumbling block as the Done and Clear buttons would not work. The ‘loading’ graphic also refused to disappear.
So we have a challenge for you. The idea is not to bring the site down, but have a ‘play’ with it and see what problems/bugs/challenges you can find. Seeing as it is a creative thing, the person who finds the most creative bug wins How To Reduce The Cost of Software Testing.
Deadline is 30th of September. Submit bugs as a comment, linking to any images/writing elsewhere if necessary.
I went through follow the steps vaguely. Similar to you I drew random things. Then I just tried clicking on the when it asked for a sword. It stopped working. http://tinyurl.com/3vyfjuo Am going to keep hunting see if there’s anything new. Fun!
I just drew a vaguely straight vertical line in the “stickman” box, it then went to the next screen for drawing the key, I drew another line. Buttons stopped working and the loading didn’t disappear. I then clicked refresh on my browser (chrome) and drew another vertical line as a stick man and clicked done, it then got stuck in a loop. My line is just bobbing up and down, with the bottom of the line bending. It’s pretty funny to watch.
I started again. This time drawing a small circle. This seems to work fine mostly. When I was asked to draw a balloon I draw a large L. It changed my image to just an I and used it as the egg. It seems if you draw over to the right, it will allow you to draw it but will then have a cut off point on the right, which the user is unaware of, I’d count this as a bug of sorts, strange user feedback.
Right must go and do some work again, thoroughly enjoyed my break! Will try again later.
I can’t draw in this area anymore https://picasaweb.google.com/103762105505886979485/September222011
hihi, nice!
if you draw a curve instead of something with “legs” it will remain in an infinite look trying to “walk” i draw a smile face. i had to replay in order to get out of the loop. first thing when i entered the site.
Draw a straight horizontal line instead of a matchstick man, result: it will start crawling on the screen from one point to another
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8423/92099142.png
second bug:
draw a dot instead of the matchstick man. result: the dot will freeze in position, the “loading” splash will appear, then the box and and the message to draw the key, . the “loading” splash will hang on the screen and won’t disappear, and the dot won’t move at all.
third bug: draw another dot instead of the key and click done. result: everything freezes: the animation and the buttons will hang on the screen and give no response.
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/5804/18353350.png
fourth bug:
access application directly by link http://www.drawastickman.com/index.htm?o=00-00-00-22#
background, share button and the loading splash loads, then the application freezes
fifth bug: when the “draw a matchstick man” box opens, draw something outside the white are. The buttons will appear but the “done” will freeze. now you can draw in the white area, but the button won’t work anyway.
sixth bug: when you are asked to draw something, draw anything, click clear, then done. buttons will freeze
Sticking to the instructions given but playing with scope, it doesn’t say how the stick man should be positioned.
Try drawing the stick man upside down and he’ll walk with his head.
Drawing him in a wheelchair actually copes pretty well, the wheelchair wheels do the “walking” but otherwise it hangs together.
Drew him reclining with feet to the left and arms behind his head and he can either stick in the middle of the screen in a limbo dancing loop (much as Ana’s curve) or once he stretched/shuffled himself off the right side of the screen leaving a blank screen aith no further instructions.
Images for last comment
Reclining man shuffling off
http://postimage.org/image/xmmkyu4k/full/
…and he’s gone
http://postimage.org/image/xmwi6x38/
am observing a performance issue here.. when we share our drawing through mail then it takes alot of time for recipient to load it.. am waitng sicne 10 minutes and its not yet loaded…
Moreover i have even observed that if multiple users access the site (say 10), the site will become extra slow and no more user will be able to access the site
I took a slightly different approach. For sites like that I’d expect the page to load very quickly – if it’s not there almost instantaneously people are likely to loose interest.
Using Firebug I found that there is a javascript call to
http://hitcents.cachefly.net/animguides.js?callback=parseMe&_=1316871025196
which always takes an extended amount of time to come back, for example 8.seconds with a page total of 15 seconds. So over half of the total page load time is taken by this one call. In some repeated tries that ratio was even worse, sometimes a bit better but that call always stuck out like a sore thumb.
The images load with performance problems as well. There seems to be a random factor of one or more images not being served in the sub second (usually a lot less) time that all the other images are served in. Size of the image doesn’t seem to play a part which may indicate a problem with the image server – more digging would be necessary here.
Interesting information to be found here
I decided to try drawing something like a “serpentine” (but after I saw its behaviour, I call it “the jumping serpentine” ). After a few minutes my jumping friend finally asked me by a key, I thought “ok, you want a key, sorry but is gonna be a little dificult”. I mean, I drawed the key as far away of my friend as I could do it, and what I got was a “jumping key”. While the jumping key was “jumping” the jumping serpentine was “jumping” too. I got the same behaviour with the sword, I mean, a “jumping sword”. It really takes a long time see its behaviour and if you’re “patient” you’ll see how the application “breaks down” bacause it really takes a long time to my jumping friend do what is suppose to do. (I must confess that It was fun to see all the drawings “jumping” without any sense!).
screenshots:
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/2614/drawastickman.png
http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/7347/canyoudrawakeyinmyhand.png
http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/3449/jumpingkey01.png
http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/2391/jumpingkey02.png
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3845/jumpingkey03.png