5 reasons to let your testing team put on their uX-Ray glasses

Since the birth of the QA profession it has been focused mostly on the functionality.

Test cases have been written to test if the user CAN do this or that inside the software. Now is the time for testers to start testing HOW and WHY the user can do this or that, it is time for your entire QA team to put on their uX-Ray glasses.

The uX-Ray glasses let testers do what they do best

With the advent of automated checking computers are rapidly taking over the job of the functionality tester. A computer is just that much faster when checking if a function can be properly run with the correct outcome. The computer can even do it through the UI like any tester would with tools like JAutomate or Sikuli.

This is not bad news for testers though, while robots take over tests with binary outcomes human testers can focus on explorative testing to find issues you could not even predict would be there.

And more importantly, make sure your product is useful and not frustrating to use.

Your testers probably already own a pair of uX-Ray glasses

Testers are analysts and as soon as you set them loose on a piece of software they will start applying a wealth of methods and skills they have gained over their years of work experience. These skills and methods can be applied just as effectively for usability problems as functionality problems.

They are probably already seeing a lot of UX issues but choose to talk about them at the coffee machine instead of putting them in as bugs in the database!

uX-Ray glasses find the most important issues

The way we use services has changed a lot since they moved onto the Internet and smartphones. Let’s say you wanted to book a flight in the 1980’s the consumer would make an investment of energy and money to get to your travelling agency to book the trip. If he or she were then not happy with the service they’d have to make even another investment to travel down the street to your competing agency. Today the consumer makes no investment at all. If your service is not 100% satisfying or maybe just a tiny bit confusing you risk losing the customer to the competitor that’s only a few clicks or taps away.

Therefore optimizing your user flow and finding UX issues together with your QA team is crucial to the success of your product or service.

Your testers can communicate what they see through the uX-Ray glasses

When communicating software issues to a development team your testers are using a common language to make sure reports are kept consistent and understandable to anyone reading them no matter who reported them. Your team also has a good understanding of how to prioritize issues. These skills are also applicable when reporting UX issues.

There’s so much to find when looking through uX-Ray glasses

Designers might think that they are creating flawless designs, but that is only true as far as a developer can write flawless code. Sure the functionality of that design or code in itself can be flawless but when it is subject to different variables such as user input, 3rd party services, integrating systems and such it is easy to see you’re going to end up with at least a few errors.

On top of that, the design also has to be interpreted by front-end developers and then maybe changes have to be made to make the design work in for example HTML5.

During the implementation of the design it is very common to run into issues relating to the back-end. A lot of the time a design has to be changed during implementation when performance issues arise due to too much data needing to be fetched or necessary user variables not being available.

With the uX-Ray glasses you could find just as many usability issues as you find functionality issues.

Do you have anything to lose on testers wearing uX-ray glasses? How much time would you save by not having to do as much user testing or when performing fewer iterations on designs?

Short about the Author
Carl Horned is an avid tester with several years of experience from the computer games industry, where he has worked with both technical and explorative testing. At AddQ he is part of an initiative to increase awareness about the importance of usability and how it impacts the end-user experience utilizing the test profession.