Mobile applications have become an integral part of our daily lives, and their importance continues to grow. The need for high-quality mobile app testing is now more important than ever to ensure an excellent user experience. In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, the agility of mobile app development is crucial for a successful product. Bugs that go undetected during the development stage can result in significant business losses and damage to brand reputation. Therefore, exploratory testing of mobile apps is essential during development.
To ensure a mobile app is tested thoroughly, exploratory testing is a flexible and dynamic way of testing that involves exploring its functionalities without predefined tests to discover its strengths and weaknesses. By conducting exploratory testing, all possible usability flaws are covered.
If you’re committed to delivering a high-quality, user-friendly mobile app, we invite you to join us on an exciting journey exploring the role of exploratory testing and how it can empower your team.
What is Exploratory Testing?
Exploratory testing is a crucial testing method for online app testing that allows testers to uncover hidden bugs that may go unnoticed in traditional scripted testing methods. This test helps identify potential user issues and hidden defects that may not be evident during scripted testing and allows testers to leverage their domain experience and expertise to evaluate the software’s quality. Exploratory testing also promotes creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration among testers, leading to more rigorous and comprehensive testing.
Benefits of Exploratory Testing
Exploratory testing allows testers to explore an application to understand how it works and identify areas for improvement or fixes. It provides flexibility to testers to randomly select the functions they want to test while simultaneously exploring other functionalities of the application. This is why exploratory testing is often considered real-time testing, enabling testers to freely explore the application
Saves Time: Unlike elaborate test plans on online app testing, exploratory testing requires no detailed test plan and is based on human intuition. It is an immediate plan to identify bugs in an application and eliminate them. This means that exploratory testing can save time, making it an efficient testing method.
Goes Beyond automation: Automated testing allows the testers to run the same tests repeatedly, but it does not tell the users’ perspective about the application. For example, if we have to test whether the UI of the application is attractive and easy to use, then it cannot be determined through automated testing. It can only be explored and tested via exploratory testing.
Making Quick Changes: Today, an application needs to be updated frequently to meet the all-time high-end user’s expectations without compromising the quality. Therefore the application testing script must address challenges quickly to reduce the time to market. When your team uses exploratory testing, they can identify flaws and improve the application’s performance. This way, they can maintain a high-quality, reliable, and user-friendly application.
Skills & Flexibility: Exploratory Testing has no rules to test Android apps online. Creating new test cases enhances your skills in creating new tests, which will also expand the testing scope in future projects. Additionally, it lets you adapt to changing requirements as a product changes, enabling you to run tests with tight deadlines.
When should you carry out Exploratory testing for your mobile application?
Exploratory testing is an unscripted mobile testing technique that can be carried out at any stage of application development, such as initial testing, after updates, or even during ad-hoc testing. This approach involves exploring the application and gathering information about it, which enables testers to quickly identify valuable insights.
Exploratory testing can be performed under the following scenarios:
If scripted testing is unable to find all errors.
If your production team needs quality feedback in a short time.
When your development is in the early stage and is unstable.
When it is difficult to determine the test case.
Why should Exploratory testing be an integral part of your testing process?
Without exploratory testing, there is a greater risk of missing small details that users generally notice in an application, such as spelling mistakes, extra fields, missing images, or code errors. When you follow a test script religiously, you focus on making sure the software matches the script.
Exploratory testing allows testers to explore the software to find inconsistencies that automated testing would miss. It is about discovering everything possible because the information helps make better decisions and improve software quality.
Conclusion
Tools like pCloudy can be excellent for exploratory testing, as they provide testers access to various real mobile devices, collaboration features, and automation capabilities, ultimately improving mobile apps. With pCloudy, testers can perform manual exploratory testing on real devices and use features such as the built-in recorder to take screenshots and record videos of their testing sessions. Additionally, pCloudy allows for easy collaboration between team members, helping testers share findings and resolve problems.
A mobile app testing strategy incorporating exploratory testing will increase testers’ effectiveness and efficiency, resulting in higher-quality apps. Through exploratory testing with tools like pCloudy, testers can find and report defects that might be missed by automated or scripted tests.
