Usability Testing For a Social Media and Gaming Application

Every application has to go through a detailed testing phase in order to be released and accepted in the market. After all, no application is expected to survive the competitive market without ensuring that every aspect of the app is perfectly operational. However, at times application development companies keep testing of the apps restricted only to the functionalities, forgetting the importance of usability testing for all sorts of apps. Usability testing accounts for the efficiency and understandability of an application and the benefit it offers to its users. Without securing a good-to-go certificate on this aspect, no application holds valid ground to be launched into the market.

Usability testing encompasses a vast arena; so any trivial problem with the application can be considered to be a usability issue. The situation becomes all the more challenging as this sort of testing has no definite or strict guidelines for testers to follow. If there was a uniform checklist of task that could be performed while testing usability of applications, things would have been easy for testers. Moreover, the challenges increase with different kinds of apps that require differing approaches of testing. Testing application for social media and games, or any other types, will not involve the same approach. Neither will each testing pattern attempt to answer the same questions while testing these applications, nor will they undertake the same methods. Yet, the end-target for every sort of usability testing is ensuring a faultless app is offered to the users.

When it comes to testing the usability of social media applications or gaming applications, the first factor that you need to check is accessibility. Today, with the vast number of mobile devices and computers available in the market, it is of prime importance for users to test whether the application in question can be easily accessed by every sort of devices or not. Smooth and effective accessibility accounts for user friendliness, which makes sure the user experience or UX of the application is good enough to arrest the attention of the users. This has to be done with the help of screen readers, screen magnifiers, testing with keyboards and keypads, voice dictation tools, source code inspection and more. Defining a good balance of manual and automated techniques for testing, the accessibility of any application can be checked.

Once the accessibility is tested, you need to know how all the features of the application are working across various models. Cross-platform compatibility is one of the major aspects every user looks forward to when judging an application. If your social media app or gaming app, fails to load itself properly on all platforms and devices, there is a possibility that users can discard your app and move onto another option. To avoid this fate for your app, it is wise to ensure that all features perform to their optimum levels. In addition to this, every application should be checked for adherence to compliance standards like Section 508 and more. Failing to do so can result in involvement of regulatory issues for the application development companies.

Usability testing on the whole attempts to answer certain basic questions, based on the feedback received after the tests. Although getting automated results often works out for free applications, it is better to secure feedback from real users, when it comes to apps with specific goals. Such apps might be put under stricter scrutiny, in order to get proper feedback and improve all features and aspects of the app. This is done to provide a great user experience for all users. Some of the critical questions that usability testing attempts to answer are whether users understand the app and how to go about it, which features do the users find most enjoyable and engaging, what are the key aspects that will encourage users to come back to the app again and again. It is vital for any application to generate repeated and continuous user engagement, so any tester has to find out whether the application under monitoring is capable of doing that or not. In case it can bring back users time and again, the features that compels the user to return needs to be identified.

Other similar questions that usability testing provides answers to are what is the best medium for the application’s use – web, tablet or mobile; if it is a game, to what degree should social functionality be created into the game and so on. In case of testing gaming applications, there are certain additional queries that get answered with usability testing. These are; whether the difficulty level set for users are too complicated or not and whether players are able to manage and navigate through the level or not. Moreover, if a new feature is added to the later versions of an application, usability testing on real users can reveal how this new feature has been accepted by users. So, though this testing can definitely involve additional expenditure, it is something that you need to do. Even if you want to save on costs, it is essential to carry out usability testing in the simplest form rather than conducting no tests at all.

In addition to the cost factor, there are certain other considerations that testers have to keep in mind while conducting usability testing of social media, gaming and other applications. Primarily, this includes selecting an appropriate testing group who represent the target audience of the website. Only if the testing group matches the target audience, you can get accurate and effective results. This indicates that testing the application with relatives, friends, and employees within the organization would not give a clear feedback. This is especially true for employees within an organization who might be able to understand and use the app much better than the targeted audience, creating an illusion that the application is clear to the target users.

Thus, selecting the testing group, informing them about the procedure of testing, making a detailed plan and setting certain tasks, and paying attention to how users react, rather than what they say can help tester to get a better understanding about the usability of an application. Based on these feedbacks from real users, testers can try and implement improvements in the app to make it better.

About Author: Stella Holmes is a Professional content writer. She likes writing in blogs and posts about software testing. Stella has written a number of articles for various web-sites. Stella is a big fan of Manchester United football team and tries not to miss any match of them.