Cosmetic bugs: Reflection of your application

What urged me to write this blog was, the attitude I have been facing over the years about cosmetic bugs. The attitude being, Functional bugs are more important than cosmetic bugs. As a tester, I always want to improve the quality of software which I am testing. I always try to cover all functional aspects so that the application should not have any major functional or blocking issue.

What happens if the software is working correctly, but doesn’t motivate user to use the application? It is the GUI of the application that connects with the user, if it has issues the application will certainly not attract users.

What is a Cosmetic?

Cosmetic is generally related to beauty or we use it to enhance our beauty.

A good looking or well-dressed person always attracts attention in a crowd. Similarly, a good looking application will always attract user’s attention in the crowd of applications.

What are cosmetic bugs?

Bugs found in the GUI of the application are called as cosmetic bugs. These bugs do not affect the processing of the application, but can have great impact in some contexts.

Cosmetic issues are present on UI part and most of the time they are very much visible.

For example: spelling mistake, grammar mistake, font size, colours, tab order, text overlapping etc.

Importance of testing cosmetic bugs

The first thing that user interacts with, is the GUI of the application. On front end, if there are issues like grammar or spelling mistakes then, it will create a negative impact on the user. Sometimes client has specific requirement regarding fonts, colours or shapes. While designing, development and testing phase, we have to consider these points as well.

Tools for UI testing:

1. Material Cue (For Android) — It allows us to place a specific grid pattern on our application, so that we can check the alignments and margins throughout the application. The grid patterns available in this applications are great to use with material design.

2. Designer Tools (For Android) — It creates an opaque overlay of designs on our application, so that we can match the design with application and understand the differences quickly.

3. Measureit plugin (For Chrome, Mozilla and Safari browsers) — It allows to check alignments and margins on browsers.

Note: All the above tools are free ??

How to handle the cosmetic issues :

We can consider the following points to prevent cosmetic bugs from being introduced:

1. Designers can create a Style guide for the reference of developers as well as testers.

2. Testers can perform testing on designs, so that issues are identified in the design phase itself.

3. Developers should follow the designs thoroughly.

4. iOS developers can use Auto layout while designing the UI.

5. Initiate review meetings for UI design and ask the developers to get their concepts cleared.

6. Tackle the UI bugs from time to time, do not let them accumulate.

Conclusion

We should give importance to cosmetic bug’s as much as functional ones. If the application looks beautiful the users will be tempted to use it and then only they will understand its usefulness.

Hope you find this blog helpful in your quest to attract users ??

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