It’s been more than four years since I started testing & managing mobile app projects ranging from the eBook app, eCommerce apps, food ordering apps, travel apps and news aggregator apps. This includes the creation of test strategies, hands-on testing, mentoring new testers and testers moving from web testing and even building a mobile testing practice. I am enjoying testing more than ever after getting into mobile app testing. The recent blog post from Katrina Clokie on Mobile pathway triggered to share some exercises that can help your mobile testing work enjoyable.

Playing Games One of the better ways to get acquainted with mobile technology is to play mobile games. I had terrible time coaching testers who were new to the industry. Coaching them testing concepts like test strategy, tests, SBTM and test coverage, HIG, Android fragmentation was not getting well with most of them. I was playing and addicted to The Room game then. So, decided to experiment by asking testers to play it. The next day I asked [forced] a couple of testers to play the game and take notes while playing, then to write an experience report after completing the game.
Testers face reaction changed from surprise [when told them to play], anxiety [when they opened the game], thrilled [when the complete the training mode] and excitement [after cracking each puzzle]. It took a couple of days for them to finish the game after testers felt more confident to explore new stuff. From then on it became the first activity when I start coaching mobile app testing. This opens up a whole new world of mobile to new [mobile] testers. There was pin drop silence during this exercise in CAST tutorial, in spite of Michael Larsen’s presence ;-), as delegates focused so intense in playing the game. A few months back, I was coaching a young tester outside of my job, and this is what she wrote.

Exploring Apps The mobile world is creative & sleek. The hardware integrated feature combined with touch interface encourages the designers to unleash their creativity. When testers explore various apps from the iOS and the Android marketplace, they learn how problems can be solved creatively and efficiently compared to the web. This helps in changing the tester’s mindset, especially if they are switching from web testing to mobile.
Some of the ways to find exciting apps are looking at the top rated apps from each app category and analyse to understand the reasons behind their success, search apps from featured categories, top 10 apps, Apple or Android recommended apps, apps that won design awards. Here is an example of how exploring apps can help bug advocacy or recommendations to improve UX. Below is a portion of a screenshot of mindmap from exploring some top apps.