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Wearable Apps And Testing Challenges
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By [x]cube LABS
Published: Aug 28 2015
Image Courtesy: www.forbes.com
Testing a wearable app has become a brand new challenge for test engineers. Wearable to app communication is important, and creating that connectivity/ association can be a primary cause for concern. The word wearable refers to the electronic system that is being incorporated into items such as clothing and accessories which can be worn or attached to the body. Wearables are integrated with sensors and are communicated to via an application installed on primary devices like smartphones or tablets. Wearable apps consist of both hardware and software components, and applications are incorporated into various wearable home appliances, tech and vehicles. Let’s look at some of the challenges that testers face while testing wearable apps.
Data Sync
It is a very important challenge in testing the wearable application. Test engineers need to be more focused on data sync and need to check if data from the tablet/smartphone is synced properly to the wearable apps. QA plays a crucial role in testing the data sync especially when the connection of the device through bluetooth is lost, device gets switched off due to low battery, when wearable apps and device get disconnected or reconnected to each other. Communication between the wearable and the app is very important, hence testers need to be more careful while testing.
When wearable apps get synced to each other, the data on the actions performed by the user in Apple Watch or in other devices needs to be synced properly without any technical issues.
Screen Size/UI
Testing a wearable application is different from testing mobile apps. Another challenging task for testers, therefore, is testing the resolution of the application on wearables like Apple watch. As the screen size of the Apple watch is very small, test engineers need to be more cautious on UI/design of the application. The user should find the look and feel of the application to be user-friendly and not clumsy. The application look and feel should be user-friendly and not be clumsy to the user.
Functional Testing
Wearable apps have come to the market with a bunch of sensors, and while testing the application with different kinds of sensors, the functionality should not be affected, but needs to remain the same as expected. QA testers have to come up with new and different scenarios for testing wearable applications since customers will use different kinds of wearable devices.
Battery Life
The other major challenge for testers as well as developers is the battery life of smartphones or wearables (by kaseman). Many different test scenarios come into place when the battery of the phone or the wearable device is OFF while testing the wearable-to-app. The data of any actions performed by the user when the battery is off in the primary device or the wearable has to be saved. Whenever the battery is ON, the data of the device and the wearable need to be restored.
Testing on Real Devices
Testing the application on a real wearable device is quite essential. Very few emulators are available in the market to test the wearable applications, and it is also possible that they may not provide accurate test results. Hence, testing the application on a real device is a challenge for testers.
Jyothirmai works as a Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She has 4+ years of experience in Mobile, Web and Desktop applications, and expertise in testing different domains like Health Care, Social and Insurance.
Tags: wearable tech
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