When we talk about UX (User Experience) we talk about the dialogues that occur between a certain interface and people.
I talk about people because when we design digital products or solutions, we do it for human beings, and the term “User” seems a little impersonal to me.
Forgetting that our products and creations will be used by real people is an all too common mistake. With our software, people with different levels of education, age, at various times of the day, with or without accessibility problems, etc., interact with our software.
Although it is common to use “people” in product design, typical users, to encompass the highest possible percentile, it is a custom more used in UX than in programming.
A recurring problem in the industry is to separate development, design, QA, etc. This leads to a lack of communication or at least a barrier between areas, which must be eradicated. If we don't, we may incur the risk of analyzing a product with slanted eyes, or reducing it to the sum of its parts. Serious error.
Testing how friendly a site or app is is not only beneficial, but also necessary. Apart from the testers having basic notions of UX, supplementing with a real test using a sample of at least five people (Virzi, 1992 and Nielsen, 1993) will allow us to ensure that we cover at least 80% of usability problems.
It's about taking neutral profiles, oblivious to development, unrelated to design, that look at the product with fresh eyes, providing valuable feedback, which can escape us in the daily hustle and bustle of projects.
The role of QA is to ensure the correct performance of what has been developed. This includes minimizing the number of existing bugs, whether through manual or automated testing, of APIs and so many other methods.
But it also includes a preventive aspect, such as an instance of reviewing prototypes in design, it can detect flaws or usability improvements before they move on to layout and development. It should also be an extra check to ensure that the product design team hasn't missed something key.
Sometimes it also includes proposing new methodologies and workflows to verify the aesthetic and functional compliance of what has been developed, a role closer to operations.
It's about ensuring the quality of the product in all its forms.
All of this brings us back to usability. The latter is usually the differential between a good application and a great application.
That QA Testers have notions of UX, and give importance to it, is especially vital when you consider that most design teams are shared between several projects at the same time. For this reason, they tend to be ignored when the customer approves high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes.
Someone has to ensure the experience of the people who are going to interact with the software after this stage. A simple review of usability heuristics can address most interface problems.
People who work in engineering and development have a very different vision from that of a client, just as the customer has a very different vision from that of the designer. What is achieved or achieved for one is not the same as for the other, and it is logical.
Reality is made up with a little bit of each of these views. In part, a more artistic and flexible one, of how a product should look and feel. Another, more pragmatic and analytical.
All of them are necessary to create something that complies with what you propose to solve, that works optimally, that is friendly, aesthetically pleasing, that is scalable, that is accessible, in short.
It must be understood that QA and UX are more holistic concepts. Don't think so much about QA being a tester, that UX is purely and exclusively focused on usability, but understanding both disciplines such as Quality and Experience.
From Quality Assurance we can assist in the process of improving the final experience, we can test the flows proposed by UX, go through the application and verify the error and success messages, have the system provide feedback on its status, and provide a lot from our side.
We have to make sure that we give him all the help and attention possible in the early stages of the project's life. Every error detected at this stage is exponentially cheaper to correct than in development (and production of course).
Ideally, you start by testing the prototypes, before moving on to development. If QA isn't a comprehensive process, it loses a lot of potential, and we're guaranteed to have a lot more work in later stages.
This is where I call for manual testing in favor of automated testing. It seems logical that if our product will be used by people, it will be manually tested by humans as well.
Is it intuitive? Are the flows tedious or do they feel good? Do I have a lot of avoidable actions in the process? Unnecessary clicks? Does it scale well on all screen sizes?
Naturally, they are criteria that have subtleties and subjectivities. It is vital that the tester in charge be able to say:
Whether the testers are skilled or have their eyes trained will be especially relevant if the product sector involves marketing.
In short, we are at a time when we have to think about Usability when it comes to quality, and about building the experience of our digital products.
For this reason, it was recommended to eliminate silos as much as possible, to prevent each area from functioning as an automaton that receives inputs and delivers results without taking into account the enriching interaction that it leaves out by not knocking on the doors of the UX area.
QA and UX are disciplines that have a lot to contribute to each other. In fact, a collaborative methodology is proposed. Open communication is extremely important, with specific channels designed to facilitate the flow of ideas between both teams.
These can be constant meetings with developers to see the prototyped interactions, in the corresponding context, and thus establish expectations in a clear and visual way.
Documentation is critical, defining where, how and a standard for communicating specifications becomes increasingly important as teams grow and projects scale.
The next step is to educate QA in concepts of Usability and Design, to train the eye on what to detect and predict, which would allow QA to test the entire interface so that the elements look and behave as they were designed.
Doing a demo with the developers is a step in the right direction if it's about achieving a feedback loop that serves as constructive criticism and gives context to the tickets they receive.
The last thing would be to define a clear and uniform channel for raising design and usability bugs. Nomenclature, images, labels, priority, etc.
Having said that, it should be added that for the future, it is ideal to complement our skillset with skills that cannot be automated, or are almost impossible to replace with a machine, such as the study of interactions. It will become increasingly valuable to be a polyglot QA, who understands complementary disciplines.
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By Pedro Ossorio Arana, QA manager of Balloon Group
