Last month, the uTest Community Management team kicked off the uPanel Webinars!

Rather just listening to one person talk in a straight presentation, the uPanel Webinars are very open and involved discussions on helpful topics for the uTest tester community. During each webinar, the panelists respond to questions from both the moderator and the audience.

In one of our most recent (and very popular) webinars, we explored the topic of video documentation for mobile bugs, something that developers are increasingly requiring from their testers. Video documentation helps to clarify the actions leading up to the discovered issue, and especially valuable with in-the-wild testing. Many testers struggle with determining the best method for capturing a bug in video on particular devices in a way that will give the TTL and the customer the most detail possible.

The video capture uPanel Webinar explored these challenges, and provided best practices for capturing video documentation of bugs in mobile test cycles. Kayla and Tara made some great recommendations for tools and tips to follow when trying to grab the right visual info for developers and customers. Check out the webinar below: Read more…

Our Testing the Limits guest this month is Jonathan Kohl, a consultant and technical leader who writes and speaks on a wide range of software development and testing topics.

In this interview we talk to Jonathan about his passion for the field, what’s changed over time, his take on mobile app testing and his advice for new and seasoned testers. To learn more about Jonathan visit his website or follow him on Twitter @jonathan_kohl.

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uTest: I think it’s safe to say that you’ve jumped into the world of software development and testing whole-heartedly. What drew you to this field and how do you stay passionate about it?

JK: The bottom line: I love to build things, and creating great software with a talented team is incredibly rewarding. Knowing that we have created something that helps make people’s lives easier is gratifying. I have found an ideal mix of problem solving, technology, creativity and satisfying and impressing customers in the software development industry.

I have great friends in the industry, and we keep each other sharp, and work on side projects together. We can talk about the latest technology, tease each other about programming tools we like and dislike, or branch off into just about any topic when we’re together. We also serve as a great support network for each other when someone is struggling, either technically, or personally. When we are working together to solve a difficult problem, nothing describes that energy of collaborating and working past your weaknesses, and that triumph of shipping working software at the end.

I ended up in this field by accident – I got lost on my way to law school. In the mid 90’s, I had three university professors who were incredibly influential: Dr. Michael Kubara (Philosophy), Dr. John Rutland (Management) and Dr. David Cowan (Mathematics). I was taking logic and philosophy classes from Dr. Kubara, and he told me to talk to a Math professor because I was delving into territory that he didn’t have expertise in. Dr. Cowan was teaching me Linear Algebra at the time, and jokingly said: “What are you doing with this ancient logic when the real research is in computer science?” Dr. Rutland had us study Data General for his class, and I was reading Tracy Kidder’s book The Soul of a New Machine.  The quirky nature of the technical people in the book appealed to me (I was playing in a band at the time, and read legal journals and philosophy papers in my spare time, yes, I was pretty quirky myself) and I loved the elegance of logic, and the questioning nature of philosophy. I agreed to try out a computer science class, and ended up getting sucked into an internship at a software company not too long after learning to code.

The software company reminded me of what I had read in Kidder’s book Soul of a New Machine, particularly the interesting, intelligent technical people. I enjoyed hanging out with them, and working on really difficult problems. I loved the fast paced, work-hard, play-hard culture of a software startup. I’ve stayed here ever since, with a brief trip back to university to finish off my undergrad degree. Once in a while I am tempted to pursue the law degree again, but I am invariably sucked back into a great project or opportunity.

uTest: You were an early adopter of Agile and later started talking about “post-Agilism.” What are your thoughts on the Agile movement over the years? (Since you could probably write an entire book on this topic give us the dust jacket version.)

JK: I started looking into Agile methods when I was working on a team in 1999 that was trying a combination of Rapid Application Development (RAD), Open Source, and iterative/incremental models like Spiral. The lead developer sent us this article called “Chrysler Goes to Extremes” which described the very basics of Extreme Programming. We liked that it was open and free (we didn’t have to purchase some tool chain and coaching we couldn’t afford) and we started trying some of the ideas out. We then bought the book “Extreme Programming Explained” by Kent Beck, and started implementing XP as best we could. A year later I was introduced to Scrum, and we had good success with it. After a while, I started noticing failures on Agile projects, and people moving on and doing other things. That was fascinating to me. Sadly, instead of learning why there were failures, there was an overwhelming urge to suppress them, or worse, dehumanize people by blaming them for doing it wrong.

As for Agile methods in general, I am ambivalent.  I am glad that lightweight methodologies are much more common place than they were in the ‘90s, and we have benefited from creating a common language around practices, and our tools are so much better now than they were ten years ago. I enjoy working on many Agile projects, since they fit my process and personality, and how I like to work.

However, there is a lot of snake oil out there, with proponents claiming that merely adopting Agile methods will lead to a successful business (What about having a great product, great customer service, skilled people and strong financials? Don’t those sort of matter too?) That really turns me off.  Furthermore, for years, any Agile failure would inevitably involve blaming the victim: you did it wrong, you don’t get Agile, if you were really Agile it would have been a success, which often sounds like another variation on the “no true Scotsman” argument fallacy. Sure, sometimes people fail because they made some mistakes, or didn’t commit, but every Agile project that fails can’t be blamed on the people.

Read more…

Last month, we introduced a brand new UI for Apphance, our mobile quality tool that makes it easy for mobile app developers to understand how their apps are working across a wide range of mobile devices, carriers and locations. After making so many improvements to the UI, we’re ready to turn our attention to the other half of the Apphance software stack – the SDKs. Today we’re launching a new and improved version of the iOS SDK, version 1.8.8, that adds several features and enhancements our users have been asking for. Let’s take a look at a few of the big ones:

Two-Finger Swipe Bug Reporting

One of Apphance’s coolest features is in-app bug reporting. You simply shake the device and Apphance responds by taking a screenshot and allowing the user to write a complete bug report right on the device itself. Our customers love this feature because it allows them to see bugs in the same context as they were discovered, along with important details and information about the device and app state.

While most users prefer to trigger bug reports by shaking the device, some of our customers have asked us for an alternative. Many of them use the accelerometer for other purposes, or they’re developing fitness apps where the device is always in motion. With this new update, we’re introducing an alternative (and optional) bug reporting approach that relies on swiping your fingers upwards from the lower corners of the screen.

Instructions for changing the bug reporting mechanism are available in the Apphance help topics. By default, Apphance will still trigger bug reports using the accelerometer, but switching to the two-finger swipe method can be accomplished by adding just two lines of code.

Read more…

When uTest launched Applause in late January of this year, we hoped to give brand, business and tech leaders a go-to source for understanding how users perceive their apps. Whether you’ve seen a decline in your download numbers or you’re wondering if your app’s new UI is a step in the right direction, Applause has you covered. It is the only explicit app analytics product that synthesizes app store reviews into an easy-to-consume, 0-100 score and provides details on ten actionable attributes. This provides a deeper look into which aspects of your app are pleasing users and which are leaving something to be desired.

Applause has crawled more than 1.2 million iOS and Android apps since its launch and that number continues to grow. With more than 65 million reviews crawled, the question became, “What’s next?”

The answer today: Windows Phone Store.

Applause has been crawling app reviews in the Windows Phone store behind the scenes. As of today, Applause has crawled more than 700,000 reviews across nearly 70,000 Windows Phone apps. This is the second major advancement for Applause. In early March, the Applause Index was launched as the first-ever stock-style index for mobile apps, providing a daily look at user sentiment for iOS and Android apps as a whole and by app category.

But back to Windows.

The capability to crawl the reviews of Windows Phone apps was launched after we received strong interest from CTOs, CMOs and CEOs for the same, sophisticated data analysis for Windows Phone apps that Applause provides for iOS and Android apps, according to uTest Lab‘s Matt Johnston. While other mobile analytics tools let companies listen to what users are doing in their apps, Applause enables brand, business and tech leaders to hear to what users are saying about their apps, Johnston said.

With Applause extending its reach to the Windows Phone Store, it helps paint a much clearer picture of how an app on three of the four major app stores is – or isn’t – performing in the eyes of users. Applause is now crawling and providing information for Windows Phone 7 and up apps available in the Windows Phone Store. So what are you waiting for, find your Windows Phone app’s score today!

What happens if you’re in an accident, incapacitated and can’t communicate with emergency workers or doctors?

If you have a health condition they should know about – an allergy, condition or medicine requirement – you’re probably wearing a medical identification bracelet. Maybe someone found your phone and got ahold of your “in case of emergency (ICE)” contacts – a spouse, parent or sibling that might know more about who you are and your overall medical condition. That was a decent plan back in the days of flip phones, but it’s far from foolproof now.

“ICE became popular after the London bombings, everyone was saying put it in your phones, ‘ICE Mom,’ ‘ICE Dad.’ But because we have passwords on our phones now, that’s pretty much passé,” said Joseph Ekman, founder of ICE Standard.

Instead of keeping a simple phone number saved behind a locked screen, Joseph came up with an easier accessible and more informative version of ICE. ICE Standard offers free and paid versions of iOS and Android apps that display information on a device’s lock screen. In addition to emergency contact information, the ICE Standard app lists any medical conditions or devices you have, any medications you are on, your allergies and any other information you’d like to share (such as being an organ donor or vegetarian). In addition to this information, the top of the app is color coded to give emergency responders an at-a-glance insight into your well-being. The color auto populates based on what information you pre-load into the app.

“Red is high risk, it tells the EMT to stop, there’s high risk here. It could be someone with diabetes, or an allergy,” Joseph said. “If you’re just taking a medication that would be yellow. If you’re not taking anything you’re green, you’re good to go. If you want to be private about the medicines you’re on or your medical conditions you don’t have to put that in, you can just type ‘call my doctor’ and it will still come up as yellow or red.”

Joseph got the idea for a better ICE method after a disappointing run-in with emergency care standards following a surgery.

“When I was in recovery a nurse handed me a piece of paper and told him to put it in my wallet and hopefully someone will find it. All I heard was ‘hopefully,’” he explained. “I found out there were no standards for in case of emergency standards.”

The app was quietly launched in beta in March 2011. An official press release that followed four months later started the app on a quick rise up the charts. Since then, it’s been featured on CBS radio, on a Today Show segment about spring break safety apps and was eventually named one of the top seven iOS safety apps. Joseph attributes the app’s success to the fact that it appears on the lock screen of a phone, is available on both iOS and Android and incorporates more useful information that can help EMTs immediately. People seemed to tune into this need even more following recent events such as Hurricane Sandy.

Read more…

Africa has the fastest growing mobile ecosystem in the world, growing by more than 40% each year for more than a decade, according to the GSMA, a global organization of cellular operators. On top of that, more than half of the web traffic in Zimbabwe and Nigeria comes from a mobile device – the highest level of mobile internet use in the world (the average percentage of web traffic coming from mobile is 10%). The continent as a whole now has 475 million mobile connections, as reported in a recent Washington Post article.

Many people in Africa are embracing the mobile boom, in both urban and rural areas. GSMA reports that 50 innovation centers have popped up and large companies like Google and Nokia are actively encouraging mobile development by African companies and organizations. As a result, apps, services and mobile websites have been appearing in recent years designed to help everyone from those living in large cities to rural cow herders and fisherman. From Washington Post:

Across sub-Saharan Africa, technology, particularly mobile technology, has transformed the lives of digital-savvy entrepreneurs. While many are forging successful high-tech businesses in urban centers, others are finding ways to help people such as [rural cow herder] Wanjiku prosper in more traditional, low-tech professions such as farming and fishing. Digital tools are also being used to overcome the continent’s obstacles to growth, such as corruption and weak health care, social services and education. …

Mobile technology is improving the lives of some of Africa’s poorest people, in some of the continent’s most remote areas.

A key factor to making sure this mobile surge remains successful is understanding the target audience for each new app. Someone living the the middle of the city (presumably with a decent network connection) who is looking for news about an election is going to have very different needs and wants than a farmer in the middle of nowhere who needs to find a local vet, get information about disease outbreaks or look up the fair market price for livestock. Testing apps designed for rural use inside those new innovation centers is going to leave some glaring holes. Rural Africa is very different than a lab and will present a slew of factors developers (who might not have ever been a fisherman or lived in a rural area) won’t be able to anticipate. In-the-wild testing is the only way to ensure these new apps not only work where they need to work, but are understandable, usable and useful to those who will ultimately be using them on a daily basis. Usability testing, especially when targeting a group of users so different than the developers, is essential. Something may seem easy and useful to you, but you’re not standing next to a river or in a cow pasture trying to access information (that has never been at your fingertips before) on the fly. Listen to your users (or, if you’re using crowdsourced testing, people who closely represent your users) to understand what they want and need and to find out how they naturally interact with mobile apps. (And don’t forget to pinpoint which devices, operating systems, versions and mobile carriers are the most prevalent in your target area.)

Read more…

There are some interesting factors that can’t be replicated during lab tests. You can’t account for network strength, what other programs are running on a given device or a user’s intuitive understanding. You also run into issues you might not have thought of (and that wouldn’t have been an issue in the past), factors like how users hold a mobile device. It turns out this is a bigger variable then you might realize. Steven Hoober wrote an in-depth piece on how people hold and use mobile devices in the wild for UX Matters. During his recent study he found that there are three major ways people interact with their mobile phones.

For two months, ending on January 8, 2013, I—and a few other researchers—made 1,333 observations of people using mobile devices on the street, in airports, at bus stops, in cafes, on trains and busses—wherever we might see them. Of these people, 780 were touching the screen to scroll or to type, tap, or use other gestures to enter data. The rest were just listening to, looking at, or talking on their mobile devices. …

Most people hold their mobile phone with one hand, but a large percentage “cradle” the phone – holding it with one hand while using the other to perform actions. Broken down into percentages, 49% of people use their mobile phones one-handed, 36% cradle the device and 15% use two hands.

While most of the people that we observed touching their screen used one hand, very large numbers also used other methods. Even the least-used case, two-handed use, is large enough that you should consider it during design.

Steven points out that it’s not uncommon for a user to change their grip depending on the task they’re performing or the situation they’re in at the moment. Plus, each of the three methods he and his team observed have variations depending on the user. Here are some illustrations that demonstrate how a user might hold their phone and what type of reach the position gives them. Green means the area is easily accessible, yellow requires some reaching and red means a user would have to alter their grip.

Read more…

It’s a question we’ve heard again and again, and at times wanted to pull our hair out over. How do you conquer device fragmentation?

Device fragmentation a huge issue in the mobile world for businesses of all sizes – but it is especially challenging for small businesses whose internal resources are stretched thin. If you’re a small company you may decide to leave behind Windows, Blackberry and a range of other smaller operating systems, and go after only iOS and Android with your app. Don’t sigh with relief just yet. Even if you’re developing only for iOS and Android – or even if you simply pick one of the two – you’re still facing a massive range of devices that is growing by the week.

Mary Ellen Gordon, of The Flurry Blog, recently pulled some stats to find out if small app developers are becoming an endangered species due to the inconsistencies of connected devices:

“Suppose you’re an app developer who wants to ensure that your app is optimized to function well on 80% of the individual connected devices currently in use (e.g., my iPad, your Windows phone). How many different device models (e.g., Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ Wi-Fi, Galaxy S III) do you think you need to support? 156. Maybe you’re okay with having your app optimized for only 60% of active devices. That still means that you need to support 37 different devices. Even getting to 50% means supporting 18 devices, as shown below. If you’re a large or particularly thorough app developer, reaching 90% of active devices will require supporting 331 different models.”

If you’re a small business app developer, perhaps you shoot low and settle on covering 20% of device models. Gordon says 20% is still a massive headache:

” 20% of device models is still a big number. Using the 80/20 rule, the market for devices might even seem concentrated: just over 7% of device models account for 80% of active users. Still, the large total number of device models in use poses challenges for developers.

It’s obvious that different apps are required for different platforms. Developers can choose to serve only a portion of the app market by developing apps for only a subset of operating systems (and consequently a subset of device models). Even having made that choice, though, adaptations may be required to accommodate different versions of the same platform (e.g., iOS 6.x versus iOS 5.x, forked versions of Android, etc.), smartphones versus tablets and the increasingly wide variety of screen sizes and aspect ratios in which those devices are now available.

Developing apps on the device models that represent the majority of devices currently in active use has become an expensive and time-consuming process. Not optimizing or testing apps on devices being used by even a minority of people exposes developers to negative user experiences and potentially to buying expensive devices to troubleshoot problems as they arise.”

Gordon brings up a really good point; we’re not just talking about device fragmentation here. We’re talking about a variety of mobile carriers, OS fragmentation, variations of screen sizes, and many other factors. Traditional testing methods are no longer sufficient on their own to conquer the challenge of device fragmentation, and all the other inconsistencies in the mobile world.

In-the-wild testing outside of the lab across real devices, carriers, OS’ and locations is the only way to successful combat the unique challenges presented by mobile fragmentation. And this doesn’t only apply to small businesses. Users are quick to abandon any app, no matter what the size of the business and development team behind it, if it doesn’t function well and load almost instantaneously on their device.

Not to mention, having your app available on some device models and not others can be a real problem. Darrell Etherington of TechCrunch highlights that the only way to succeed globally is to go cross-platform, and to do it well:

“The way to achieve truly global appeal, and hopefully convert that into global success, is to go cross-platform, which when factoring in Android often means testing on a host of devices to ensure that you’re not sacrificing user experience in one key area. Because while devices may come in many different flavors, app marketplace reviews are all aggregated to the same place. Anger a group of users associated with one device, and you’re going to poison the well of your review pool, so to speak, not to mention generating negative word-of-mouth buzz.”

To clarify the title of this blog post; ‘no’, device fragmentation will not necessarily kill off app developers (that’s a little too drastic). However, it certainly will continue to make it difficult for dev teams to succeed, and this difficulty will only increase as more devices make their way into the mobile landscape.

Overall, whether you want to develop for several platforms – or only one – you need to test under real world conditions across devices to ensure quality. Developers who neglect testing will struggle to keep up in a world filled with countless devices and high user expectations.

In August, we introduced Apphance, a new mobile quality tool that makes it easy for mobile app developers to understand how their apps are working across a wide range of mobile devices, carriers and locations. Over the past several months, we’ve spent a lot of time watching our customers use Apphance in their daily lives – learning what works well and what doesn’t. With this new knowledge, we began working on a goal of making Apphance as easy to use as possible.

Today we’re pleased to announce the result of all this effort – a big update to the Apphance platform’s user interface. When you next login to Apphance’s web platform, you’ll be greeted with a totally rethought UI that emphasizes improved usability and easier access. We’ve also made the panel very mobile friendly, meaning you can use Apphance on screens as wide as a plasma TV and as narrow as a smartphone.

Some of the improvements you’ll notice include:

• Easier build management and distribution
• Clearer lists of bugs and crashes
• Better presentation of session information
• Improved team notifications and announcements

Each of these improvements are designed to make your testing more efficient and to improve your app’s quality. You can learn more about the new Apphance UI in the Apphance help topics.

Live Reports

With this new UI, we’re also launching new live reports.

Many of our customers are also asking for more visibility into the data behind how their apps are used. Apphance tracks an enormous amount of data, and now you can see that information on your app’s overview page. The live reports are updated in real-time and let you toggle between pre-production and production data. You can tell at a glance how many times your app has been used, installed, or crashed.

Wrap-Up

If you’re interested in learning more about Apphance, check out the Apphance homepage or watch this quick introductory video.

The Apphance developers are not done. More new features are coming very soon, and we have some exciting stuff cooking. Have a great idea for our future product releases? Drop us a line and tell us what you think.

As you know, our forward-looking innovation arm, uTest Labs, recently announced the app analytics service Applause. Applause enables companies to monitor, measure and improve their app quality and user satisfaction. By analyzing more than 60 million reviews from over 1 million apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play, Applause provides the deep app intelligence that brands need in order to win more users, earn greater loyalty and beat the competition. Even more recently, the team at Applause launched the Applause Index, which provides a daily look at how users feel about bellwether iOS and Android apps and assigns a weighted, cumulative index score similar to those used to measure the overall stock market. The increasingly holistic approach stems from the demands we heard from the market for a more accurate measure of app quality. That’s because until recently, measuring user satisfaction and app quality was next to impossible. But with the emergence of user-centric analytics and metrics, brands now have the ability to pinpoint what their users want, need and like.

So what are these metrics? And how can they help companies launch higher quality apps?

On Thursday, March 21 at 12 Noon EST, guest speaker Michael Facemire – Forrester Research Inc. Senior Analyst on Application Development and Delivery – along with uTest CMO Matt Johnston, will host a free, hour-long webinar that will help you learn:

• Why mobile app quality is more important than ever
• How today’s leading app developers measure quality and user satisfaction
• How to use metrics to streamline the SDLC to fit the demands of mobile
• How to establish and monitor key performance indicators

Ready to discover a new way to measure quality in the world of mobile? Register for our webinar today!