Is Real World Testing Better, Faster And Cheaper Than Lab Setup?

The market is flooded with different kinds of mobile devices. Real world testing is helpful for an app that has to perform in different hardware, software versions, and network conditions. All this coupled with user habits and multitasking, an app is bound to falter.

Limitations of Orthodox Lab Testing

Lab testing covers a specific segment of test scenarios.

Software testing is traditionally done by a quality assurance department in a lab with few devices and emulators.

Testing in the lab, cannot help testing scenarios such as signal strength fluctuations, changing network connections, incoming calls, and messages, etc.

Emulators make it possible to cover a wider variety of hardware, but they aren’t fully representative of the actual device and its limitations.

Adding to this chaos, mobile companies keep releasing new devices and subsequently, software updates come with the package.

Merits of Mobile App Testing in Real World Scenarios

Real world testing involves professionally certified testers that can be an individual freelancer or part of an organization which specializes in Community Management for enterprise-level QA projects. Either way, this individual is selected from the target audience group of the business app.

This tester’s feedback based on technical software testing knowledge and user-level experience can complete the plethora of scope that needs to be tested.

There are a number of scenarios, both qualitative and quantitative, where the only real world can bring the solution to the table. Three most prominent of them are discussed below:

1. Device-related scenarios 

   Mobile devices come with the luxury of mobility, but they bring in a lot of other variables.

   1. Incoming calls and messages
   2. Notifications and multi-tasking
   3. Battery
   4. Storage
   5. Malware and security problems

2. Network related scenarios 

   Mobile devices run on networks. All networks have their own limitations.

   1. Switching between 2g/3g/4g networks
   2. The signal strength of the network
   3. Changing device location

3. User level scenarios 

   There are many objectives here that real-world testing can meet.

   1. Overall functionality and user requirement feedback
   2. User acceptance of new features
   3. Actual usage patterns, flows and heat maps
   4. Benchmarking performance on the latest devices
   5. Testing compatibility on the old devices

Having said all this, the most important factor is that it takes less time, money and effort.

FASTER, CHEAPER AND BETTER

Save time with easy ramp-up capability of the crowd based techniques.

Run multiple scenarios simultaneously.

Understand the niche market and the real value that is reaching the target audience.

Grow your app at the pace of the changing market.

If your app is critical to your brand  and you want  to test your new application pre-launch and/or post-launch, CLICK HERE

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