Think before test - User Experience matters!!

Software erudition continues to grow, the days of multiple years/months has gone by. Today, the development testing teams are expected to release a product more frequently and hence the overall the software development life-cycle is much shorter. This becomes even more relevant when it comes to Mobile Apps. Now with the boom of smart phone devices and their adoption, testers need to have the expertise to test on more devices. In general words – More to tests in same or less time. 

In general, traditionally, software testing has focused on verification, validation and somehow measure the performance of a Native app. However now a days this is not enough. In its place, forward thinking development teams are more weight the development and testing frameworks that evaluates software from End User perspective and that accounts for the user experience irrespective of underlying technical requirements and performance reports.

For quite some time, software testing has been focused on verification, validation and somehow measure the performance of a Native app. However now a days this is not enough. Evaluating software from End User perspective that accounts for the user experience is more than necessary. The underlying technical requirements are of course to be kept in sight.

 Due to this shift, the developers expect more than a list of bugs and statistics as testing output. They want analysis of the results and their implications on overall performance of the application along with any strategic change in the overall process, infrastructure etc. In other words, just logging a defect in the tracker in not enough. This dynamic change has impacted a lot in mobile application testing, which often present large user volumes, device explosion, low profit margins and fast development cycles.

Few key strategies of mobile testing that can result in faster, comprehensive, testing cycles that are more aligned with business objectives and target market.

 Know the App from end user perspective -In this digital world, it’s important to understand the app user – Think before test – I would say if we understand the app user's expectation then it would be easy to define it in test strategy, the test strategy should have thorough, efficient and complete understanding of the user behavior. Testers should take the time to dip themselves into the user’s world (think from their prospective) to completely understand the use cases. To properly test for the real user experience, testers must invest in understanding the way user want to use the app.

Define your test cases as end user will use the app

For example – Before testing, it would be always helpful to consider and thought on few below factors-

• What time of day does a user typically use the app?
• How long is the session duration?
• Think that the user will use the app in a "hurry-up" mode looking for quick answers and information OR he use in “Lazy" mode?
• Whether the user likely be simultaneously accessing multiple applications?

Learn through User Engagement Strategies - In order to learn the most and get complete understanding of the intended user, Tester should have to talk to client/product manager and read their app marketing documents. These documents gives insight to things like target audiences, engagement levels, targeted communications and notifications etc. For some apps, companies may even consider investing in market research or focus-group testing to identify preferences and behavior patterns that can improve your app testing strategy further.

 So most of the time as a tester we should know the App from end user point of view. To completely perform user testing, tester must know how the user prefers to use the app and where those preferences deviate from or conflict with how the app was intended to be used. User always have specific goals and preferences with the app. If testers test only to the functional test cases, chances are you’ll miss some very important user experience cases – and possibly lose some customers along the way because you as a tester are unaware of how they really use the app.

When it comes to customer satisfaction - Customers only care about the experience!!

Thanks for reading.