作者：Raj Koneru

移动开发者和公司在发布产品时的一大棘手问题就是移动测试，这也正是最易消耗资金的环节。

由于测试可能占据10%的移动开发成本，所以如果缺乏正确的方向和工具，这个棘手问题有可能迅速演变成一场灾难。

那么，移动开发公司在发布应用时可以选择哪些方法度过这个令人抓狂的测试阶段？如果你考虑到四种测试——单元、功能、数据和用户体验（就像将各个模块组合起来创造一个更广泛的测试），事情就变得容易多了。

mobile-design(from venturebeat)

单元测试：基础

简单而言，单元测试就是分别测试单项功能。通过测试应用的各个环节，开发者能够在将产品提交给测试员之前自己发现问题，确保产品一开始就考虑到了QA和一致性等问题。

功能测试：走形式

在这种“走过场”的测试过程中，功能测试会通过检查用户每个动作的输入和输出情况（游戏邦注：包括每个划动、点触、输入及其他手势），监测应用行为。

任何开发者都知道，编写糟糕的失误极令人受挫，了解测试员会发现错误的操作也很重要。使用我们所谓的“restrospection”概念，能够形象化地追踪测试员行为，并纪录下他们的完整操作历史（包括生命周期事件）。

数据测试：验证和整合

移动开发者可以通过数据测试确保整合质量，以便在数据到达应用之前进行验证。这对开发者来说是最重要的环节之一，因为如果后端系统上线但运行情况却不如预期，用了完全不同版本的代码，或者自动经历开发或更新时，这就会成为移动应用的一大障碍。

如果后端系统无法如期运行，这对测试员来说无异于一大折磨。所以这里的要诀就在于在数据到达应用之前对其检验，无论后端系统是否已经上线。

用户体验（UX）测试：第一次就要做好

目前已存在不少测试用户体验的方法，有些是关注文本超载/特定对象在屏幕上的布局（包括使用截屏对比图片），但在我看来，最好的方法是进行用户界面（UI）布局，即关注物体在一个页面上的排列。

结合强大的移动观察器时，你可以真正对比和比较开发者对移动应用布局所做的调整。另外，优秀的用户体验能够帮助开发者减少使用人类测试员所带来的麻烦。

多渠道问题

现在不少企业都开始执行多渠道移动战略，从网站到移动应用等多个渠道并行不悖，所以他们需要一个针对这些渠道测试应用的方法。但如果你认为创造一款多渠道应用很困难，那就努力找到测试的好方法吧。

我的公司有个客户之前曾表示，他们花了三分之一的发布时间用于测试。这种方法并不可行，因为当今的用户和企业想要的是那种一开始就已经更新、功能完整的产品。

市场上有许多可以执行部分测试的产品，但它们却要求你针对各个渠道分别购买测试套件——一个用于网页，一个附件用于移动平台等等。你还要从不同供应商手中购买工具，这又增加了确保其相互整合与沟通的复杂度。

未来我们还将看到全新而不同的移动测试方法。这是一个创新领域，移动测试将走向更加自动化的过程，这将便于开发者更便捷地利用小型组建模块，创造更大、一致、可重复，并且成本更小，能够更早发现漏洞的测试。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The mobile testing challenge: How to improve your UX and prepare for the future

Raj Koneru

San Francisco, CA Early Bird Tickets on Sale It’s one of the biggest headaches for mobile developers and organizations launching mobile initiatives, and one where the most capital can be wasted: mobile testing.

Since testing can amount to as much as 10 percent of a mobile development budget, this headache can quickly avalanche into a disaster without the right direction and tools.

So what options are available to help companies get through this frustrating period before launching a mobile application? It’s easiest if you consider the four types of testing — unit, functional, data, and user experience — as building blocks that can be put together to create more comprehensive testing.

Unit testing: the basics

Put simply, unit testing is about testing individual functions in isolation. By testing each part of an application on its own, developers can detect problems before they reach the tester and ensure that QA and uniformity are part of the process from the beginning.

Functional testing: going through the motions

As a mobile “tester” goes through each motion in a test case, functional testing monitors the behavior of the application by examining the inputs and returns from each action that was called by the user — every swipe, tap, input, and other gesture.

As any developer would tell you, a poorly written defect is frustrating, and understanding what a tester did to produce an error is important. Using a concept we call “restrospection,” you can visually track what testers do and record a complete history of their actions that include lifecycle events.

Data testing: validating and integrating

With data testing, a mobile developer is looking to ensure integration quality and to validate the data before it reaches the application. This is one of the more critical steps for developers, as it can be a major hold up for mobile applications if backend systems are live but not functioning as expected, using a different version of code, or are undergoing development or updates themselves.

There’s nothing like opening up 50 or 60 tickets from testers when a backend system isn’t working like it should. So the holy grail here is to validate the data before it reaches the application, regardless of whether backend systems are live.

UX testing: getting it right the first time

There are several approaches to user experience testing out there that focus on text overruns/the location of a specific object on the screen including image comparisons using screenshots; but in my opinion the best approach is to do a user interface (UI) testing layout that focuses on the how items are aligned on a page.

When combined with a powerful mobile visualizer, you can truly compare and contrast the changes a developer has made to the layout of a mobile application. Further, user experience done well can help developers eliminate the challenges posed by using human testers.

The multi-channel problem: what’s coming down the road

As businesses start to move towards a multi-channel mobile strategy that aligns everything from a website to mobile apps to kiosks, they’re also going to need a way to test apps for all these channels. But if you thought just building a multi-channel app was hard, try finding a good way to test it.

At my company, one of our clients reported that prior to working with us, they spent a third of their launch timeline on testing. That’s just not going to be feasible as we move into a world where consumers and organizations want updated, fully functional mobile presences at the drop of a hat.

The reality is there are a plethora of products on the market that do portions of testing, but they often require you to buy separate testing suites for each channel — one for web, a bolt-on for mobile, etc. You also have to buy these tools from separate vendors, which adds the complexity of making sure they integrate and communicate well with each other.

What we’re going to see is a radically new and different approach to mobile testing. It’s an area ripe for innovation, where mobile testing will become significantly more automated. This will enable developers to leverage smaller building blocks earlier and give them the ability to build larger, consistent, and repeatable tests that are less costly and catch bugs early. （source：venturebeat）