What are the best practices for Agile UX testing?
Intense competition means that businesses need to
ensure the quality of their products and achieve a faster time to market at the
same time. This has brought about the concept of Agile testing services wherein testing and development processes
are carried out concurrently. However, in this setup, it is the usability
testing that has been relatively ignored.
A product has to meet the rigours of user
expectations to achieve customer satisfaction. This calls for the integration
of a customer feedback mechanism within Agile
testing services. And once the customers’ feedback is taken into
consideration, the product features can be duly enhanced based on the feedback.
These will have a serious effect on pre-empting the inherent quality challenges
and gaining user acceptance. To enhance the user experience of the products and
services, Agile testing specialists
should undertake the following steps.
Best practices for Agile UX
testing
It has been observed that Agile testing specialists are not always on the same page as far
as taking the customer feedback is concerned. This has given rise to the need
for usability testing in the Agile enabled development sprint.
The best techniques and practices to achieve the
same are given below.
Plan a thorough research: Carrying out a comprehensive research by involving the real users
can be a costly and time consuming proposition, which has resulted in running UX
scripts. The prevalent approach is of doing the usability testing at the end of
the product development phase, which is often rushed or not taken to its
logical conclusion. This is due to the fact that businesses keep a close watch
on the turnaround time where usability testing does not account for much.
However, to gain a better user response to the
products, the Agile testing approach
should incorporate the conduct of a thorough research. The research should
identify the specific user segment (read high priority users) that is likely to
use the product more, and create suitable UX scripts. The Agile testers should
obtain user responses through webcam/audio enabled recording of user
experience.
In fact, the UX script can be made a part of each
and every design and development iteration. This Agile testing approach, apart from fleshing out the inherent
glitches in the code, can identify the features or functionalities that users
find difficult to navigate at an early stage. This precludes the need for
finding glitches post creation of the product prototype, thus resulting in time
and cost effectiveness.
Coordinate with stakeholders: To realize the Agile application testing outcomes quickly, it is
better to involve the stakeholders during the planning stage. If a common
vision is set up, the developers and Agile testers can work in tandem in every
possible way, including the writing and testing of UX scripts by high priority
users.
Run small tests but
recurrently: Testing the product by using a
large user base can be a complex and time consuming exercise. Try the industry
average of using a maximum of five users to validate the product. This way,
around 80% of the usability issues can be sorted out before deploying the
product. Importantly, even though the sample size is small Agile software testing should be carried out recurrently for each and every piece of the code.
Webcam enabled Agile software
testing: Online remote tests conducted through screen and
audio recording often run the risk of not targeting the desired user. On the
other hand, a webcam enabled Agile application testing can give the testers
better insights into the exercise. The insights can be in terms of
understanding the UI, functionalities and test scenarios in real time. Also, QA
testers can study the visual cues of actual users and figure out their
reactions to the product. The ultimate aim is to test the products by high
priority users and not just any user.
Conclusion
Carrying out usability testing in the Agile
framework results in better understanding of the user expectations and
perceptions about the product. This is a crucial cog in the wheel of the entire
end to end SDLC that can deliver positive business outcomes.
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