6 Mistakes To Avoid While Testing Mobile Apps

With the increase in the number of smartphones available in the market, people started trusting technology and are using mobile devices to perform different tasks in their day-to-day life which ultimately led to a leap in the development of mobile apps. Being user-friendly, smartphones and apps are being handled even by children below ten. However, if an app is excellent but isn’t user-friendly, then it will not reach the target audience/users. So, this is one area where mobile developers and testers need to concentrate.

Mobile app testing is not simple as there are multiple parameters that need to be considered and tested. As we know, testing is something where we need to do the things repeatedly which requires a lot of time and patience. This is when testers tend to make mistakes.

Making mistakes is a normal human tendency so it’s not uncommon for people to make mistakes in life – personal or professional. While it’s a fact that it’s the tester who always finds mistakes in the tasks performed by others, there’s also a possibility that even testers make mistakes during testing. A mistake will be negotiated when it is small but some mistakes are more accountable, and one should take care to avoid them.

Let’s now analyze some mistakes that need to be avoided, and how to avoid them.

 Proceeding to test the project without an in-depth knowledge of business logic and functional requirements

A mobile app will be developed in a very short time; so, sometimes the tester will test the app without knowing the complete requirements of the app. This should be avoided because a tester will not cover all user flows in the application if s/he doesn’t have an in-depth knowledge.

1. Inadequate language skills in reporting bugs

Besides being a fast-growing trend, developing mobile apps is new to everyone involved. Getting the terminology right is, therefore, a difficult thing. This is where a tester will make mistakes. This should be avoided because without a proper description of the issue, a developer will not be able to fix it.

2. Prioritizing UI over functional aspects

As the adage goes, the first impression is the best impression. All said and done, people will always prioritize looks over other things – this is true in the case of a mobile app as well. Even a tester gives more priority to the UI and takes more time in testing only UI while giving less time to functional aspects. This mistake should be avoided at any cost and same priority should be given to both functionality and UI.

3. Not capturing crash logs which makes identifying the bug difficult

If a simple crash occurs after the app is released into the market, it irritates the user a lot and the negative impact it creates may prove to be disastrous (by kaseman). In fact, it makes users uninstall the app at times. So, while testing, if the tester does not capture the crash logs, that makes it difficult to fix the issue later on.

4. Flaws in reporting formats

For a tester, finding bugs is as important as sending reports. However, due to the time constraints, testers tend to commit mistakes in sending the reports.

5. Coverage of testing on different OS versions

Due to lack of time on hand, testers end up covering testing on fewer devices. This should be avoided because when an application is designed for multiple devices, testing in fewer devices will not be enough. As every device will have a different configuration, the issues that crop up will also be specific to that device. So, before releasing any app into appstore/play store, testing should be covered in all supported devices.

6. Conclusion

Delivering a quality product at the end of the day is important to testers. So it’s important that testers take care to avoid mistakes at every stage of testing because once the app is made available on App Store/Play Store, even the smallest of mistakes can have a huge negative impact.

Preethi works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and has experience in Mobile and Web Application testing in different domains like Social, Gaming and Healthcare.