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Mobile apps testing has changed the testing landscape in many different ways
24 Dec, 2015

Mobile apps testing has changed the testing landscape in many different ways

The software testing landscape has changed in many ways in the last decade. We often call the agile style of development as one the main reasons for such a major change. While that has certainly been a major reason for such change, there are several others too, of which the mobile computing landscape is also a significant reason. With Agile, one of the changes was how quality moved upstream rather than being seen as a final activity before product release. While such upfront testing gave a major facelift for quality, mobile computing and mobile apps testing brought in another change where big upfront testing (BUFT) is not always necessary and valuable. Mobile apps testing operates in a very large landscape – the combinations to test are huge, not all devices may be available in house and even if they do, it often does not make business sense to invest in such a huge mobile lab. With such increasing complexities that mobile apps bring in, a user centric approach to testing has become the need of the day. Users are being roped into the test efforts, whether as subject experts, real end users or as pure spike testing to take on the load that big upfront testing brings in. This makes compatibility testing more real, achievable and wide in its coverage. Mobile apps have changed the testing landscape in varied ways – this includes, greater focus on non- functional testing, more awareness of end user centric scenarios, pulling the shift left test approach into a shift right approach thereby bringing an unbiased balance between understanding the system implementation to the required level and building end user empathy.

This trend will only further strengthen given that mobile computing is expected to touch newer disciplines and geographies in the coming years. Newer devices, technologies, engineering implementations are all first looking at their seamless functionality in the mobile world. While mobile apps testing has changed the testing landscape in varied ways, the one significant one to call out would be the push back on big upfront testing bringing in a greater focus on end users. At the end of the day, while the focus away from upfront testing may contradict with the core agile manifesto, the end goal both are attempting to reach are the same – the one where solutions that are faster, cheaper and of better quality reach the customer’s hands, with a competitive advantage.

Using human interface guidelines in app testing
23 Nov, 2015

Using human interface guidelines in app testing

Mobile app development is reaching newer bounds by the day. What started with a few thousand apps in 2007-2008 timeframe is now close to 1.8 million applications just in the US. If such are the numbers, imagine the global footprint. While this is exciting to see, an equally alarming number is that the average shelf life of an application is a mere 30 days. If you introspect to see why this number is so low, despite all the time and effort that goes into building them, it is not very difficult to understand the underlying reasons. Poor quality of the designed applications is one core reason, where the developer (especially freelance), often puts together a quick and dirty test effort to evaluate his application under the cover of ensuring its readiness to market.

If you look further into it, the issue is often with the overall design of the application. The design has probably been put together without much forethought and in a quick attempt to ideate the core functionality. This is where the human interface guidelines (HIG) come in very handy. These are guidelines aimed to help developers, develop a usable, intuitive yet simple design for end users. These are available specific to varied platforms and operating systems such as the HIG for iOS, Android. These guidelines in the process also help bring in a desired level of design standardization within a specific platform.

While designers and developers ideally need to leverage these HIG principles in their app development efforts, the other side benefit is that testers also need to be encouraged to use these in their quality evaluation efforts. If app testing is done with scenarios outlined in the HIG documents, it helps testers check for both implementations that have been done and also make recommendations for ones that have not been done. So, it helps them catch both re-active defects and make pro-active suggestions. Given that the HIG itself is meant to make the mobile apps more usable, these documents are very intuitive to comprehend. This makes it easier for testers to follow along and design their test scenarios.

If guidelines such as these are adopted, it will help us enhance the quality and the shelf life of mobile applications, and further bring in maturity into the mobile app development and testing landscape, which is very vast and somewhat chaotic today, given the sheer number of developers and applications on the global level. Let’s thus use these human interface guidelines, as testers, to bring more relevance in our testing efforts and add value to the mobile app development discipline.

12 Aug, 2015

Optimizing Your Mobile App Testing Effort

Mobile applications have significantly expanded the scope of a test effort primarily due to increased testing combinations that have become necessary. Compatibility testing on the various device, OS, screen resolution combinations cover app functionality, layout and rendering, performance, usability amongst other testing attributes. While it is a no brainer that we want to maximize test coverage, given the constraints around time and cost in app development and more importantly, there are smart ways to optimize test coverage, to reap maximum benefits, testers are always on the look-out for such best practices to arrive at the right mobile app testing strategy. Specific to Android app testing, there are human interface guidelines (HIG) published by the Android team helping testers identify a good suite of tests to cover for their application. Such a set if also available for iOS by Apple.

We at QA InfoTech, have been testing mobile apps for the last several years now. We primarily focus on iOS and Android app testing services that we have now built a separate practice, ATE that focuses on mobile application testing. Based on our experience, we recommend some tried and tested practices in formulating a robust mobile test strategy. These include:

  1. Functional issues are more OS dependent rather than on the device size or screen resolution
  2. User interface issues are more specific to a device size or screen resolution rather than on the OS and typically show the following characteristics:
    1. Different devices with same screen size and OS version would give identical results
    2. Devices with different screen size but identical OS version would give different results

With the above inferences, we target a test matrix which covers varied devices, screen resolutions and operating systems at least once. We also keep in mind usage patterns such that more tests are run on the heavily used devices in the market. With such an approach, we have been able to help clients reduce their mobile app testing time and cost by about 30%, bringing in significant market returns for them.

With newer computing technologies coming in around wearable devices, augmented reality, SMAC, and the never ending set of new devices that enter the market every few days, the mobile app test matrix will only get increasingly complex. It is in the tester’s best interest to optimize the testing effort, to keep the overall quality effort relevant, user centric and realistic in achieving business goals.