User Experience Testing: Why is it important for any business?

User experience (UX) directly impacts customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, business success. Firstly, a positive UX enhances customer engagement by providing intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable interactions with a product or service. It reduces friction, streamlines processes, and creates a seamless user journey, leading to higher user retention and conversion rates.   

Secondly, a great UX fosters brand loyalty and advocacy. When customers have positive experiences, they are more likely to return, recommend the product to others, and become brand ambassadors. By prioritizing UX, businesses can differentiate themselves, gain a competitive edge, and build long-term relationships with customers, driving growth and profitability. 

And with that comes the role of UX testing! 

UX testing or user experience testing allows testers to dive across all these criteria and create more sustainable business solutions for tech-driven organizations. However, ensuring effective output from any UX testing initiatives requires the active involvement of the stakeholders. These must include:  

Business analysts, developers, testers, and most importantly, The Customers!  

Though involving users may overwhelm UX designers and even add to the project's overall cost, testing a product for the end-user experience allows the creation of more competitive yet reliable technologies.   

Ultimately, it is the approach that defines the success of UX testing initiatives or usability testing services you hire from a third-party QA company. From the selection of methods to guidelines and containing everything that can save the bank and deadlines, this blog underlines how tech organizations could yield the potential of UX testing.   

Therefore, it becomes necessary to dive into the details of creating a user-centric design while touching on the necessary UX testing methodologies, UX testing tools, and everything that could help attain measurable success.   

Understanding User-centric Design  

User-centric design, also known as human-centered design, is an approach that prioritizes the needs, preferences, and behaviors of users throughout the design and development process of a product or service. It involves understanding the users' goals, conducting research, and incorporating their feedback to create a user experience that is intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable.  

How To Test For User-centric Design?  

Testing user-centric design involves various methods and techniques to gather feedback and evaluate the usability and effectiveness of the design from the users' perspective. Here are some common approaches for testing user-centric design:  

1. Usability Testing: Usability testing involves observing users as they interact with a prototype or a working version of the product. Usability tests assess how easily users can accomplish tasks, identify pain points, and gather insights into user behavior and preferences.  

2. Surveys and Questionnaires: Surveys and questionnaires allow designers to collect quantitative and qualitative data on user satisfaction, preferences, and overall user experience. They can be administered before and after product deployment to gather insights and measure improvements.  

3. Interviews and Focus Groups: These methods involve engaging users in structured or semi-structured interviews or group discussions to understand their needs, gather feedback, and gain deeper insights into their experiences, expectations, and pain points.  

4. A/B Testing: A/B testing involves comparing two or more design versions to find out which performs better based on predefined metrics. This allows designers to validate design choices and make data-driven decisions.  

5. Eye Tracking: Eye tracking technology helps track and analyze users' eye movements and gaze patterns while they interact with a design. This provides insights into visual attention, information hierarchy, and usability of the interface.  

6. Analytics and Heatmaps: Analyzing user behavior using tools like Google Analytics or Heatmaps can provide a lot of data on how users engage with the product, helping identify areas for improvement.  

7. Remote Testing: Remote testing allows designers to gather feedback and conduct usability tests with participants located in different locations. This method enables testing with a diverse user base and saves time and cost associated with travel.  

Leveraging these testing methods could enable designers to iteratively improve the design, validate assumptions, uncover usability issues, and ensure that the product effectively meets user needs and expectations.  

Advanced UX Testing Methodologies   

As the field of user experience (UX) continues to evolve, several advanced UX testing methodologies are emerging to meet the demands of the future. From digging opportunities with usability testing and other traditional techniques, here are a few examples of advanced testing practices that can redefine UX: 

• Biometric Testing  

This methodology involves measuring physiological responses such as eye movements, heart rate, skin conductance, and facial expressions to gain deeper insights into user emotional states, attention, and engagement. Biometric testing helps designers understand subconscious reactions and fine-tune UX based on objective data.  

• Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) Testing  

With the rise of VR and AR technologies, UX testing methods are adapting to assess the user experience within immersive environments. UX professionals can conduct testing in virtual or augmented realities to evaluate interactions, usability, and user satisfaction within these unique contexts.  

• Neurological Testing  

Neurological testing utilizes brain imaging techniques such as EEG (electroencephalography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) to study brain activity and cognitive processes during user interactions. By understanding how the brain responds to UX stimuli, designers can enhance user experiences at a deeper cognitive level.  

• Voice User Interface (VUI) Testing  

As voice assistants and voice-controlled interfaces become more prevalent, VUI testing focuses on evaluating the usability, accuracy, and user satisfaction of voice interactions. This involves testing natural language processing, voice recognition accuracy, and user comprehension within voice-driven interfaces.  

• Multimodal Testing  

Multimodal testing involves assessing user experiences that combine different modes of interaction, such as touch, voice, gestures, and haptic feedback. It aims to optimize the integration and synchronization of these interaction modalities to create seamless and intuitive user experiences.  

• Emotional Testing  

Emotional testing methods focus on understanding and measuring the emotional impact of a UX design on users. This can be achieved through techniques like sentiment analysis, facial expression recognition, and self-reporting to gauge emotional responses and tailor UX accordingly.  

• Cross-Cultural and Global Testing  

With the global reach of digital products and services, UX testing needs to address cross-cultural differences and adapt to diverse user groups. Cross-cultural testing methodologies involve considering cultural nuances, language preferences, and localization requirements to ensure a seamless user experience across different regions.  

Learn more: User Experience Testing

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Saas, PaaS, and IaaS Explained - A Comprehensive Guide

Cloud computing is transforming the way users and businesses interact with mobile devices and computers. Gone are the days when people used racks of disk drives, expensive data centers, and even large IT support teams to manage and store a wide variety of their data. 

Due to the rise of modern and more innovative technological trends, cloud computing becomes an excellent substitute for the centralization of computer services under one server when tested and established properly. 

If you’re a person who is planning to move your business to the cloud or ready to acquire the benefits that cloud computing offers, you need to understand the three service models of cloud computing Saas, Paas, and IaaS solutions, their comparisons, testing process, and other information in detail. 

3 Most Important Service Models of Cloud Computing : Saas, Paas & Iaas

• Saas

Definition: Saas refers to Software as a Service that is a software licensing and delivery model in which software licensing is provided based on subscription, and it is hosted from the center. Saas (Service Software) is also popular as cloud application services, “software plus services” by Microsoft, and an “On-demand software” that is used by businesses in the cloud market.

Saas aims to deliver applications via the internet, which are further managed by third-party vendors like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Zoho, Google G Suite, SAP, and more.

Saas users can work on the procured software without worrying about how the underlying software or infrastructure is maintained. The procured software or procurement software is a kind of business software used to automate organizational purchasing functions. Software functions can involve:

• Issuing and evaluating tenders.
• Selecting and ordering the product or service.
• Raising and approving purchase orders.
• Payment of invoices.
• Receiving and matching the invoice numbers and orders.

It allows the procurement department to ensure that nothing can be ordered without proper approvals. It also assures that the performance for the same type of product will be the same whether it is bought by a single user or multiple users.

The best part of Saas applications that are sometimes called hosted software, on-demand software, or web-based software, is there is no need to install and maintain the software. One can simply access it from the internet and work without worrying about complex hardware and software management.

Furthermore, Saas applications operate on the servers of SaaS providers, in which they manage access to the application and ensure to provide the proper availability, security, and required performance to its users. 

SaaS Examples

The common examples for SaaS (Software as a service) are GoToMeeting, Salesforce, Dropbox, Google Workspace (formerly suite), Gmail, Cisco WebEx, SAP Concur, MailChimp, DocuSign, Hubspot, Slack, ZenDesk, BigCommerce, etc.

SaaS Users in Cloud Computing

The most-commonly available cloud computing services or Saas products are widely used by companies for developing and growing their businesses. There are numerous Saas tools available on the internet for small businesses that one can use for content curation, document collaboration, email marketing, customer relationship management, performing fundamental business functions of accounting, increasing productivity, and knowledge management.

Saas software are beneficial for distributed global teams, mostly those who don’t work in close physical proximity.

Advantages of SaaS (Software as a Service)

• Obtain Access to App’s Data from Anywhere & Anytime

The benefit of using Saas in cloud computing is that you can access the information from anywhere, like from mobile devices or internet-connected computers, due to data storage in the cloud.

• Data Security

For using Saas-based applications or software, you need to hire onboarding expertise to manage the in-built security issues in mobile computing as the service provider already ensures the security of your data without concerning the type of device you will use.

• Greater Flexibility

Saas has become the hot-selling business model as it offers greater flexibility to every consumer and the Saas business owner. It allows you to run the SaaS business on unique verticals and make it easier for you to differentiate your product from others.

• Direct Access from Web Browsers

SaaS apps can be directly used from the web browser, so you don’t need to take any hassle of downloading and installing software. Some Saas apps may require plugins to provide you extra features. Still, you don’t need to purchase or install anything. All you need to do is use the client software for free.

• Easily Accessible Sophisticated Applications

As you’re clear with that, there is no need to purchase, install, update, or maintain hardware, middleware, or software to access the SaaS apps. SaaS applications for enterprise use are very sophisticated.

• Easy Customization

In the modern world, each user's purpose is to get the customized app because it allows streamlining of the business processes without affecting the basic infrastructure. The architecture of Saas is prepared well, so the unique customization feature is provided to each Saas user and company.

Saas providers make the upgrades in customization more frequently to help you adopt the software with low risks and costs.

Related Read : How To Achieve Speed and Scale With Cloud Test Automation

• PaaS (Platform as a Service)

Paas is a Platform as a Service that is a complete development and deployment environment with resources in the cloud, which allows you to deliver everything from simple to sophisticated cloud-based apps. Like Saas, you need to purchase the PaaS from the cloud service provider and pay-as-you-go basis, and finally, you can access the resources over a secure internet connection.

PaaS involves infrastructure that are servers, storage, and networking, including development tools, middleware, database management systems, business intelligence (BI) services, and more. PaaS is specially designed to support the full web application lifecycle from building, testing, deploying, managing to updation.

With PaaS, you are free from buying and managing expensive and complicated software licenses, the underlying app’s infrastructure, middleware, development tools, container orchestrators like Kubernetes, or other resources. Furthermore, PaaS delivers a framework to developers that they can expand and use it to create tailor-fit applications. A third-party provider or enterprise can manage all servers, networking, and storage. On the other hand, developers need to maintain the management of the PaaS applications.

Read more: Difference - IaaS vs PaaS vs IaaS

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How can AI help Automate Complex Routine Tasks?

 Voice recognition, autonomous vehicles, healthcare, education, banking, and software testing!! AI has impacted every field with its dominance. We all continue to witness a surge in technological advancements. With this, AI's role in our lives is only growing bigger. According to oberlo.in, the market size of artificial intelligence was valued at $51.08 billion in 2020, which is projected to reach $641.3 billion by 2028.  

Adopting AI practices can have many benefits for a business and its employees. It can yield higher quality, improved and increased reliability, and consistent output.  

Automation of routine tasks with the help of AI can help workers/employees spend more time on creative or complex tasks that provide enhanced value to the company and its customers.  

Also, they are not overlooking the fact that these technologies will radically transform the way of work and the workplace itself. Machines and AI technologies will be able to carry out more tasks done by human beings, complement and enhance the work done by humans, and even perform some tasks beyond what humans can do.  

With all these years of watching automation from so close and delivering AI testing services that were meant to align with future, let's look at the ways AI can automate routine tasks!  

Ways AI can Automate Routine Tasks

1. Automating Customer Support and Service 

Adopting or leveraging the chatbots option for automated customer support can help in saving a lot of time. 24/7 availability of Chatbots for customers can assist in automatically answering your questions, providing recommendations, and directing you to decide and strategize about the next step of your customer support strategy.  Furthermore, Chatbots can gather intelligence on customer needs, engagements, and emotions which can further help in boosting business profits.   

2. AI: The Game Changer Of Software Testing 

 AI technologies and tools can learn different user flows and thereby facilitate the creation of test cases based on accurate user data, increasing test coverage and making automated testing much more effective.  

This also means testers will not need to spend time generating test data based on production users since this step will be done by AI automatically. This will make testing more effective and help to increase test coverage, making it easy for user flows.  

With the help of AI, Users can register tests independently and use tests created automatically. This would further generate efficient automated test sets. In this way, even people with negligible technical knowledge can augment software testing coverage, thereby further increasing the productivity of the entire team. 

Advantages Of AI In Automated Software Testing: 

• Visual validation by performing visual testing on applications 

• Increased and improved accuracy and efficiency 

• Better test coverage  

• Reduction in costs and defects 

• Saves time and faster time to market. 

• Editing content in less duration 

AI technologies can edit the content produced in real-time, thereby developing an infinite number of variations. Shots will be switched out, and music and sound effects will change on the fly, all dictated by real-time user engagement and the personal features of the one viewing it.  

3. Creating Jobs And Integrating Human Workflows 

  With the help of Artificial intelligence in the workplace, creating jobs can be automated. This will also integrate the workflows. This is not only where it will stop, but also the workplace structure will continue to change due to AI and automation views radically. However, not forgetting that humans will play an integral role in making sure these worlds (AI and routine world) combine efficiently and effectively.   

4. Channelizing Future Strategies And Planning   

Every business today involves building strategies that will help enhance its overall business. Human beings or PR personnel are also crucial in building clientele relationships when talking about the PR industry. However, the teams can collect the data through AI and automation tools and services. This will eventually help in informing future strategies. This intelligence will specifically become a helping aid when it comes to media monitoring and ensuring that companies are able to stay abreast of competitor news and coverage.   

5. Increasing The Speed Of Routine-based Marketing Efforts 

With AI and automation in the picture, Manual analysis of marketing efforts is now considered time-consuming. Marketing efforts can be shortened from 30 hours to 3 hours with the help of AI automation. For example, creating a social media strategy that includes analyzing all of the status updates that have been posted and then categorizing them into a system, etc., can be done quickly. Automation tools will be able to facilitate better direct marketing efforts.    

6. Replace Day-to-day Low-level Cognitive Tasks   

 AI, automation, and machine learning are impacting day-to-day routine tasks considerably more than ever before. The main focus can be laid on low-level cognitive tasks such as scheduling calendar invites, routinely ordering eatables or food-related items, and determining and identifying the emails to answer/review/delete based on identification. AI-based tools can also aid business professionals in high-level cognitive tasks like identifying connections, analyzing correlations, and assessing conclusions.   

7. Transforming The PR Work 

Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation are transfiguring the job of PR professionals in an effortless way. There are several tasks such as news monitoring, researching, reporting, and building media lists that can be done without using manual methods. AI and predictive analytics will enable; le PR professionals a deeper insight into market trends and innovations. This way, it will eventually help free up mind space so PR professionals can think more strategically, creatively, and high level.  

8. Automation Of Sales  

AI can automate the routine tasks of the sales team as well. However, it won't be able to give a personal touch like interacting with the client while taking them to coffee as a professional PR would do. Still, automation can free up time for these human-centric interactions, as also McKinsey estimated that every third TASK of all sales tasks could be automated. Some of how sales can be automated are:  

• Finding leads: Predicting the time when customers or target audiences might benefit from being contacted  

• Invoicing: Checking credit and invoicing new and existing clients  

• Processing orders: It includes processing Order, stock management, and upselling queries  

• Tracking shipments: Dispatching, delivering, and returning notifications;  

• Client management: Account management, including regular check-in emails, can be done 

• Transcribe and summarize meetings with the help of AI 

With RPA software, the digital assistant can transcribe and summarize the meeting for you if you program the software bot to use AI text summarization models and leverage Natural Language Understanding software. And, even if your meeting tool already has a recording transcription capability, you can still use RPA to summarize the text for you. This significantly optimizes your productivity because 70% of your work is already done. 

Conclusion  

With the arrival of artificial intelligence, the way complex routine tasks can be automated very beneficially. It has made the tasks of almost all the fields easy, and software testing is no exception.  

But with the adoption of these methodologies and AI tools, the need for robust technologies that ultimately support continuous testing and continuous release is also rising. This is the reason why AI-based test automation tools are coming into the picture. With the help of AI, all we can see is that businesses are now able to achieve faster tests and reliable products. 

Original Post: BugRaptors

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Compatibility Testing: Enhancing ROI in Digital Transformation Era

Compatibility comes from the word compatible I.e., the capability of existing or living together. Compatibility testing is testing in software development cycle that ensures that a product (website or app) works/ functions well on different operating systems and devices.  

With the surge in digitalization, users are using a wide range of devices. Not overlook that businesses these days are doing everything possible to achieve a hassle-free bond with their customers. Therefore, companies lay emphasis on the dissemination of different apps that are accessible to users using diff browsers and devices. This is where compatibility testing steps in!   

Compatibility testing ensures compatibility of the software/app/ website in terms of browsers, operating systems, hardware, devices, databases or other things. It makes sure that the performance of a service doesn’t gets affected by different networks, bandwidths, and configurations. These days mobile compatibility testing is also becoming even more important. According to Statista, “The number of Mobile devices is projected to touch 16.8 billion in 2023.” 

Also, we are aware that mobile devices are of different brands, designs, screen size, features, configurations, network operators to name a few. This is where, to avoid the hindrance caused in compatibility, organisations prefer doing mobile compatibility testing.  

Importance of Compatibility Testing in Digital Landscape 

It's not possible to overlook the fact how businesses these days are doing best to achieve best in terms of sales, profit and ROI. In case of software development, it’s important to create such a service (App, website, or software) that caters the needs of customers. In this case, compatibility testing services ensures and maintain the responsiveness of the app or website.  

It helps developers and entrepreneurs to achieve seamless and easy-going communication with their users. Compatibility testing is relevant as it helps in ensuring that app or website works as expected across all the key browsers and devices.  

Today various businesses and organisations tend to develop separate apps for desktop and other downloadable apps for mobile devices. In this era of digital transformation compatibility testing brings better experience for users. In simple words while leveraging or sticking to compatibility testing, businesses can deliver what they promised to deliver with a smooth flow.  

How Compatibility Testing Enhances ROI In Digital Era? 

When we talk about digital transformation, we simply imply the changing demands of customers. With compatibility testing, businesses are able to get good Return on investment when the newly developed app or software meet the demands set by target audience.  

In simple words ROI or Return on Investment is a popularly used metric to evaluate how well an investment has performed. Compatibility testing if leveraged aptly can be advantageous in augmenting digital transformation.  

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• When the businesses implement compatibility testing, it is ensured that the app or software fulfills the fundamental demands placed by the customers. The demands of consumers are increasing with the increase in technology. This further fosters a satisfactory experience in users and thereby ultimately leading to increase in profits and ROI (Return on Investment)  

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• There are numerous predictable errors that an app or software can develop, such as: 

• Navigation problems 
• Alignment issues 
• Problems with UI interface 
• CSS color and style or problems with overall presentation of app or software 

These defects if left untreated can cause huge dissatisfaction to users, which further would hinder profits. In this scenario if leveraged properly, effective check on quality assurance services helps in easy solving of these issues. 

• Compatibility testing improves the overall process of software development. It is done in a way so as the issues are fixed during the initial process of development. In this way the early detection of bugs can prevent future loss or occurrences. Further, this facilitates the delivery of a smooth and flawless product to consumers which automatically increases ROI. 

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• User satisfaction and compatibility testing go hand in hand. Compatibility testing ensure that the application performs smoothly or without failure to meet the user expectations across diverse browsers/operating systems or devices. It helps in detecting irregularities that could otherwise hinder the business and reputation of the organisation. High end user satisfaction will lead to profits and enhancement in ROI.  

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Forms of Compatibility Testing 

• Hardware Compatibility testing: It completely focuses on compatibility of a software with various other hardware set-ups. 

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• Operating system Compatibility testing: It is designed to check the compatibility of a software with different operating systems. 

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• Network compatibility testing: This type of testing checks the compatibility of the software related to network-related issues like speed, bandwidth, and capacity. 

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• Browser compatibility testing: It is designed to focus on compatibility of software with different browsers such as google chrome, Mozilla Firefox etc.  

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• Devices Compatibility Testing: It checks the compatibility of the software with devices like scanners, USB devices, printers, Bluetooth and others. 

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• Mobile Compatibility Testing: It is designed to assess the compatibility of software with operating systems of different mobile devices like Android, iOS, blackberry etc.  

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• Versions of the software: It verifies that whether your software application is compatible with different versions of the software. For example, one can check your Microsoft word to be compatible with Windows 7, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 7 SP3.  

Conclusion 

Today, we can consider compatibility testing as key and crucial factor that acts as a catalyst in the current technological advanced landscape. By boosting the recommendations and referrals of your business, compatibility testing ensures positive business outcomes while enhancing Return on Investment (ROI).  

Nowadays what mostly matters for the brands is their reputation and brand value and in order to maintain that adopting compatibility testing service providers is important. So, companies should adhere to proper adoption of compatibility testing, which is the core of digital transformation.  

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