What is it about ?
While testing mobile applications, you could apply some of the different ways discussed here to bring more quality products / applications to your users. I am introducing some of the new things I have learned recently. Its called focus based testing and Its best performed during the final stages of the app submission. that nail biting moment, remember ? you hardly have couple of hours and you need something to save the day ? thats focus based testing for you.
Focus based testing
Consider having a mobile application to submit in appstore or playstore, and you are trying to make sure that everything works just the way it is. as usual, you have very limited time. nothing new in that :). focus testing performed for 1 hour, to make sure there there no obvious issues in the product and Its submit worthy. In other words, you can't use this method in the early stages of the application development to find functional defects or write UI suggestions. Lets get started. shall we ?
Touch (tap) focus , 20 Minutes : Keep the device in front of you, open the application and your focus is only touch. you will touch various parts of the application (buttons, not a button, label, status bars, dialog boxes, edges of dialog boxes) and keep going with that. you touch conventional touchable area's of the device, and unconventional places where there won't be even a button or label.
Navigation focus, 20 Minutes : Focus only on the navigation part of the application. you go next, go back, tap settings, go back, tap profile, go back, and try only to navigate to various parts.
Swipe focus, 20 Minutes : Focus on swiping left, swiping right, swiping up, swiping down, swipe up on a place where you should not actually swipe, swipe right around the left edge, right edge, swipe with the bottom bar, top bar, do an x using your fingers, and do another +, semi vertical, fully horizontal swipes, swipe for no reason, swipe on a dialog box and so on.
That's all folks. 1 hour gone.
Meaning that if you have a fatal crash in an obvious place, Its gonna show up during this time. Now submit to the appstore and pray to god..
Note that below are not Covered in this post : Network testing (Various types of networks - 3G / Wi-Fi, and various network service providers - Optus Australia and Telenor Sweden), device compatibility testing (Oh that fragmentation), Testing the Integration with other applications, localization testing, Usability testing and actual feature / functional testing and how to write a bug :)
