UI Testing: What It Is and How Should You Do It

This is where UI testing steps in as a vital guardian of user satisfaction and product quality. It is not difficult to interpret that user experience testing is a type of exploratory testing as users do not know what to test or how to test, i.e., there is no pre-defined strategy. You can perform user experience testing on a partial product to test the UI on multiple screens and locations without developing the entire project.

• This will help reduce time and resource constraints while testing multiple user interfaces.
• Those engineers could have been working on other potentially valuable tasks, but they can’t since they’re stuck with testing scripts.
• Within this scope, UI testing ensures that all UI components, including buttons, forms, links, menus, and multimedia content, function as intended.
• Reduce the time it takes to run tests while still ensuring high-quality code and UI.

Adopting this testing approach will help you ensure visual consistency while validating functionality, and hence can lead to an overall greater user experience. In the dynamic landscape of software development, User Interface (UI) testing stands as an indispensable pillar of quality assurance. It serves as the guardian of the user experience, ensuring that applications not only look good but also function seamlessly. UI testing delves into the intricate details of an application’s interface, from the alignment of elements to the responsiveness across diverse devices and browsers. UI testing, or User Interface testing, is a critical quality assurance process in software development. Its purpose is to meticulously assess the graphical user interface (GUI) of an application to guarantee that it functions correctly, appears visually appealing, and provides an intuitive user experience.

User Interface Testing: A Complete Guide

In a world where first impressions matter, UI testing plays a pivotal role in ensuring that these impressions are not only positive but lasting. This multifaceted testing approach scrutinizes UI components, such as buttons, forms, images, and layouts, while also navigating the complex terrain of user interactions. Usability testing involves real users who interact with the application’s UI while being observed. They are given specific tasks to complete, such as finding a product on an e-commerce website or searching for information on a news app.

You want to feel how smoothly it accelerates, how comfortably it turns, and how responsive the brakes are. Similarly, manual testing provides nuanced insights about the look and feel of the software and how it responds to human interactions. However, manual testing can be time-consuming and subject to human error, especially for larger, more complex applications.

UI Testing Example Scenarios

Testers cannot perform quality checks on emulator texting or voice command features. Test orchestration and execution platforms like LambdaTest enable you to perform UI testing of your websites and apps on its scalable cloud grid. Therefore, you have the complete flexibility to websites and mobile applications in a remote environment across an online device farm of 3000+ real devices and OS combinations. You can also use the LambdaTest Virtual testing platform to test mobile apps on cloud-based Android Emulators and iOS Simulators. GUI Testing is not just a finishing touch — it’s an integral step in the software development process. Bypassing it might lead us to put out software that’s functional but could be lacking in user-friendliness or cross-platform compatibility, potentially impacting user satisfaction.

Moreover, it’s not just about whether things work but also how they work. These details, while they may seem small, significantly impact the user experience. Every tap you make, every field you fill in, every swipe you take — that’s all part of the GUI. Now, GUI testing is about ensuring that all these interactions work as expected. GUI testing is the validation of user interface functions or features that are visible to users and should meet business requirements. It is also called UI testing, which stands for ‘User Interface Testing’.

What is GUI Testing? Types, Implementation, and Best Practices

Mobile user interface testing is a testing type that helps testers ensure that all the fields, labels, buttons, and other items on the screen function as desired. Mobile UI testing involves checking screens with controls, like toolbars, colors, fonts, sizes, icons, and others, and how these respond to the user input. The ultimate UI testing aims to test users’ behavior in real-world conditions. To ensure the ultimate user experience of your web and mobile applications, testing them on real browsers, devices, and operating systems is recommended. Testing your software on different devices and browsers is another great best practice when it comes to user interface testing. The testing should be very comprehensive and include different operating systems, screen sizes, and even browsers as the application might be rendered slightly differently based on these criteria.

While the latter aims to test the application as closely as possible to a real user, real UI tests are more concerned with the interface elements themselves and whether they look and behave as expected. One of the implications of this is that UI tests don’t need as much test data as E2E tests, which can make them run faster. When doing UI testing, it’s often very easy to get out of your lane and step on the toes of other forms of testing. As a rule of thumb, remember that UI testing should worry about the look and behavior of the UI. How the visual elements are presented, how they interact, respond to user input, and validate input data.

Test on different devices and browsers

Due to a large number of lines of code and the increased complexity of today’s projects, automated scripted testing is recommended. User interfaces encompass everything a user sees and interacts with on a website. When you first visit a website, the first thing you interact with is the UI or interface of the application. The user experience of an interactive web application can make or break a deal for you, and that is why it’s crucial to perform UI testing of your websites or web applications.

According to a survey by Google, 53% of users abandon tasks that take longer than 3 seconds to load. It is, therefore, necessary to test the user interface to improve the website’s performance. A website comprises numerous web elements written in CSS, JavaScript, and other languages. UI testing captures these elements to run tests and assertions on them.

User Experience Testing

UI testing typically involves using automated testing tools and scripts to replicate user interactions. These tools interact with the GUI elements just like a human would, but with the precision and repeatability that machines provide. Test scripts can be created to graphical user interface testing cover a wide range of scenarios, from basic functionality checks to complex user journeys. The tester creates tests based on experience and other factors, such as previous results. In exploratory testing, testers have a wide range of flexibility and opportunity.

Check the loading speed of the header menu after the web app is completely loaded. Test via BrowserStack Speedlab to ensure a  high-performing user interface across major browsers and device combinations. To ensure optimal UI compatibility and avoid device fragmentation, you’ll need to test on device viewports in varying screen resolutions, whether it’s a native or hybrid app on Android &  iOS. BrowserStack makes it a breeze to conduct manual or automated tests on any browser–device-OS combination. Detailed testing of the User Interface ensures that every element works and presents as it should be.

It focuses primarily on the structural and aesthetic aspects of the website since they are more critical to the user than how the data is stored within the database. LambdaTest can serve as a game-changer in combating the challenges of GUI Testing. It’s a cloud-based platform that simplifies cross-browser testing, easing the pain of testing across a variety of browsers, operating systems, and devices. Automated testing excels at repetitive tasks and can swiftly execute a large number of tests, making it ideal for regression testing where the same tests need to be run every time a change is made. It also reduces the risk of human error and can run tests in various environments and configurations. However, it cannot fully replace manual testing as it lacks the subjective judgement and creative problem-solving capabilities of a human tester.