Abstract:
Digital is the new buzzword for almost everyone. All the organizations wants their business to go digital ways so that they can reach out to many customers, but many a times we see that proper testing is not being performed for the developed solution hence it lacks many inconsistencies post production.
Lets us consider some of the product developed for end users but if the product does not have appealing UI and have inconsistent validation, no user would be interested in using those products.
Why thinking like a customer is so important for QA teams?
QA's business value is testing applications to improve customer experience. Secondly, the QA process tends to verify if regulatory requirements are met. Software application providers don't want customers experiencing immediate, can't-miss defects after a release. In this case, defects cause customers to abandon using the app or to search for something better. In the case of regulatory software, missing a requirement carries significant negative financial impacts, as well as customer dissatisfaction that rarely is repairable afterwards
But the question here comes to all the testing organizations, does the QA process truly pays for its duty? We all must think about bringing additional business values beyond our regular software testing. We all know that going forward we will be incorporating the AI and ML mechanism for our automation. Hence we must make ourselves more competitive to increase QA business value for the organization.
What customers have in mind with any new product?
- How the product looks
- How it feels to use the product
- What is the ease of use of the product
Always perform usability testing at early stages:
As QA experts, we can't claim to follow a user-centered testing process unless we conduct usability testing. We sometime feel like once the product is developed then only the application should be tested, but it should be other way around whenever we find that MVP is ready we must go ahead and perform the usability testing.
Conducting usability tests before any design decisions are made helps us identify the most important user pain points. By observing how users behave, we can uncover latent needs that people don't articulate during interviews or surveys.
For redesign projects, this process can be as simple as watching someone interact with the current version of the product. If you're building something from scratch, you can test how your audience uses a competing product
Why early usability testing?
- Getting early feedback from your target market can help you avoid those expensive errors, saving hundreds of engineering hours and thousands of dollars.
- It saves the later design & dev costs
- Identify features that are most critical to users
- Build Better User Acceptance
- Changes can be Made Quickly and Effectively
- it is always better to change the wireframe/MVM than changing the product design at later phase
Conclusion:
Whenever any new solution is getting developed we as QA colleagues should always have the end-user mindset while testing the application so that we can give early feedback to the development colleagues, stakeholders about our finding which in turn would save some cost to company and would also strengthen the bond between the customer and organization for the early feedback for delivering what the customers want from the solution being developed.
It is critical for QA to drive the initiative and fully think as a customer would. Computers cannot think subjectively and might not see the same errors that a person might. This applies to things like the user interface, navigability and overall feel of the application. Test automation frameworks might clear the code, but there could be glaring issues with how the software looks or how one function flows to another. By thinking like a customer, QA can uncover these flaws and deliver true value, building better user relationships.
Please do let me know your views/suggestions on this blog. Also, feel free to comment if you think something more could be incorporated.
