By: Dmitry Lubnevsky

Wе’ve just jumped into the new year, and it’s high time to overview the mobile testing trends that will dominate and require special attention from testers this year. Here are key trends impacting mobile testing in the foreseeable future.

1. Increasing Device Fragmentation

There are many types and models of mobile devices in the market today, and manufacturers are constantly developing new features in to attract the attention of customers. To keep up, mobile device testing vendors have two options: broaden their set of physical mobile devices or make use of the device farm available in the market. Device farms allow Quality Assurance (QA) teams to access devices via host machines the same way they would test with physical devices in their own hands.

Applying the 80/20 Rule, also known as the Pareto principle to mobile testing, running tests on 20 percent of devices will result in 80 percent of effective testing coverage. If the coverage should be broadened, then automation testing may be required to allow the team to cover all of the needed combinations of devices and operating systems. Testing on emulators may seem less costly, but emulators don’t take into consideration the hardware and can’t simulate a live environment.

To stay on trend and to be in high-demand, QA vendors should be ready to provide the appropriate testing coverage for as many devices as possible. It is almost impossible to perform testing on all devices available in the market and, what’s more, it would be far too costly. When it comes to developing an app testing plan, it is vital to gather key statistics and run tests directly on the end-users devices where possible. And again, when there are too many devices to physically test, automation via a device farm is one of the only viable solutions.

2. Chatbot Growth

Chatbots are pieces of interactive software that reside in applications, email, and SMS and simulate replies, questions and interactions of a real human being. With the availability and adoption of such frameworks as Google API, AI, and IBM Watson; it’s now very easy to build bots in mobile applications. In fact, a survey conducted by Oracle revealed that 80 percent of business aim to make use of chatbots by 2020. Certainly, this opens up a new window of opportunity for testing as well.

The goal of any chatbot is to make life easier for the end users. However, chatbots are put into action either by text or speech input, which pose a set of new challenges for QA and development teams. Testers should be able to perceive the context of the natural language input, and check whether the information the chatbot provides is appropriate. User experience (UX) testing is another aspect that requires attention with the proliferation of chatbots. Testers should make sure that the chatbot doesn’t frustrate or irritate users and requires as little input as possible to provide the relevant info.