The Growing Need for Nonfunctional Testing on Mobile Devices
Mobile devices—especially smart phones—are becoming globally omnipresent. Their usage versatility stretches across areas such as phone calls, texting, using social networking applications, playing games, and browsing websites to name a few. Mobile wars continue to become stronger by the day with a very competitive playing field for the device and OS makers. A recent study found that iPhone users spend twenty-six more minutes on their phones each day than their Android counterparts.
With this increased versatility, as a mobile application tester, it is becoming necessary to keep in mind not only the mobile functional elements at play but more importantly the mobile nonfunctional elements when determining the test scope. Processing power and resources on a mobile device are typically lower compared to PCs and Mac computers; however, mobile device usage numbers have been soaring.
This poses an interesting challenge from a mobile nonfunctional testing standpoint. Some core elements to consider here include performance, security, usability, accessibility, and coexistence test areas.
On the performance side, mobile performance testing is still challenging to the extent of how do you simulate load through mobile devices. Testers need to keep in mind that the load on the server is what really matters, and when it comes to mobile devices, the rendering time is what is most important. With the use of rich internet technologies such as HTML5, the time it takes to render content on the display screen is not negligible, and this needs to be adequately tested, benchmarked, and profiled to ensure acceptable performance for end users.
From a security angle, mobile payments are on the rise. While there is an increasing belief that mobile payments may be safer than bank cards, it does not rule out chances for mobile security attacks—a topic of focus at conferences for both mobile devices and OS makers. It is important to be cognizant of the threats prevalent in this space and build them into the testing scope.
On the usability and accessibility fronts, while the testing scope is largely similar to that of a desktop client, the form factor of the device needs to be kept in mind. Given the varied display options, the input methods, their responsiveness, and their intuitiveness are some additional pieces to keep in mind.
Accessibility is still a growing area in mobility where there is a lot of room for improvement. This is an area where testers can proactively work with the development team to suggest areas of implementation. Coming to coexistence, things such as application functionality with other ongoing tasks and events such as incoming calls, battery drain, other functioning applications, and incoming text and email messages should all be tested as real end user scenarios.
Nonfunctional testing has all of a sudden become even more important with the rise in mobile computing. The scope it provides diversifies testing opportunities, making the tester’s job even more end user scenario driven while adding a very practical dimension to the testing discipline.
