[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# Finding Your Way or Why My Dad Can't Use Windows

## Details

**Authors** Patrick (Test Pappy)

**Year** 2026

**Publisher** Test Pappy (testpappy.wordpress.com)

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Computer Science & AI

**Kind of engagement** public

**Applied** false

[Read it](https://testpappy.wordpress.com/2026/04/25/finding-your-way-or-why-my-dad-cant-use-windows/)

## In authors' words

### What they set out to do (purpose)

To account for why some people adapt easily to unfamiliar software and others do not, and to name the move the author believes explains the difference. The author's answer is structural understanding rather than memorized steps, and the tool he reaches for is a Cabrera construct: "now I learned from the Drs. Cabrera about their DSRP framework and the cognitive jigs."

### How they did it (methods)

A short personal blog post by a software tester. It contrasts the author's own way of approaching new tools with his father's reliance on written click sequences that break when an interface changes, then introduces the S-to-P jig — "One of those jigs they call the S-to-P jig, short for System-to-Perspective" — and applies it to one case: moving from Jira to Azure DevOps after a job change. The author maps work-item tracking, links, item types, hierarchy and test management from the system he knows onto the unfamiliar one.

### What they found (results)

The author reports that the jig is what he had been doing implicitly and now has a name for: "The idea is simple. You take an existing system you know and apply it to new perspectives." He concludes that people who understand a system's structure can find their way around an unfamiliar tool, while those who have memorized surface steps cannot, and presents the jig as the heuristic that makes the first approach repeatable. No measurement or comparison is offered beyond the single example.

## Commentary

### In short

A software tester adopts the Cabreras' S-to-P jig as a named heuristic for learning unfamiliar tools, and works it through his own move from Jira to Azure DevOps. DSRP enters here as one construct put to use rather than as a framework explained.

### In more detail

This is a narrow but genuine application, and its interest is in which part of DSRP travels. The author does not set out to teach the four patterns, and he does not name them; what he takes is a single cognitive jig and a specific use for it. The S-to-P jig takes a system the thinker already knows and brings it to bear as a perspective on something unfamiliar, and the author's example is exactly that move: having worked in Jira, he treats its structure — work items, links, item types, hierarchy, test management — as the vantage from which Azure DevOps becomes legible, rather than learning the new tool's menus from scratch. The framing device is his father, who navigates Windows by written sequences of clicks and is stranded whenever an interface changes. The contrast makes the author's point sharply: a memorized path is tied to one surface, while a known system can be carried to a new one. He credits the jig with naming something he had been doing without a name for it. The engagement does not go further than this. The four patterns are not explained, the jig's place among them is not described, no sources are cited, and the single example is anecdotal. A reader meeting DSRP for the first time here would come away with one usable move and no account of the grammar it belongs to.

### Response

Patrick uses the S-to-P jig for what it is for. The jig takes a system and deploys it as a perspective, and the Jira-to-Azure-DevOps case is a clean instance: a known structure is brought to bear on an unfamiliar one, and the parts he carries over — item types, hierarchy, links — are the structural features rather than the interface. His contrast with memorized click sequences also lands on something the theory would predict, since a sequence of steps encodes no part-whole structure and so has nothing to transfer.

**Patterns it shows** S, P

**Added** 2026-10-20

**How to cite this** Patrick (Test Pappy) (2026). Finding Your Way or Why My Dad Can't Use Windows. Test Pappy (testpappy.wordpress.com).