Qualitest recently held an event to discuss crowd testing, how to undertake it effectively and how it is likely to evolve in the future. The event featured a QualiTest customer, Camelot Global, it’s strategic crowd testing partner, Applause and an overview of its crowd UX functional testing model. See more
Below is a blog based on the event.
The meeting invite is in your diary, all of the heads of department have been summoned and the IT strategic review is preceded by the wise words from marketing. Well we think they are wise, if only you could actually understand them! But you know what is coming, it’s all buzzwords and three letter abbreviations and a fancy slide deck. The frustration for you is obvious, what exactly is marketing doing? When will it stop asking IT for functionality and features that are impossible to develop in the time requested?
You may have read the book, “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus”, by John Gray, the premise is that different people think, communicate and operate in very different ways so if we are to live in peace and harmony we have to find out what makes each other tick and what we need to do in order to ensure we don’t drive one another too mad.
Well, I have some news for you – Crowd Testing is the secret sauce that will bring IT and marketing together. You think I am joking right? Well let me explain. Your company decides it’s time to deliver its service to your customers by an app. IT immediately thinks in terms of wireframes, testing cycles and integration with legacy systems while marketing are working on a campaign title and figuring out which celebrity should be the face of the app. Maybe I am being flippant, but the challenge of rolling out a new technology means different things to different parts of the business.
If you look at the likes Uber, Facebook or Airbnb their business is their app. Or as Sanij Alwis, VP of Business Development for Applause put it, ‘The app is the front door to your brand’. Today we can no longer look at technology in isolation or for that matter marketing and branding as separate domains. The ubiquity of technology means that, for the examples above, the technology and more importantly user experience defines the relationship consumers have with that brand in a much greater way than any marketing person would ever admit, and this is where the crowd and testing has a huge role to play.
At QualiTest we test everything in pretty much every way possible – regression, system, automation, functional, UX, lab, in the wild – if it works we know why and more importantly if it doesn’t we know why as well. We have noticed something with crowd testing; the crowd do more than test and tell you if there are bugs or poor functionality. If done in the right way the crowd can provide the type of feedback that marketing dream about. We can leverage the crowd in order to evolve from functional testing to functional usability testing and give our clients to have continuous feedback around how apps and features are perceived by end users.
When Biraj Nakarja, Head of global testing Services for Camelot Global, spoke about it’s crowd testing experiences he explained they work with the crowd to test their new mobile apps on multiple devices and operating systems. He wants to know how the apps have worked and what the testers think about colour, font size and what is needed to make the experience interactive and engaging. In the digital world we live in these insights are vital and getting this feedback before you launch the app reduces risks in a big way and in effect protects your brand. If an app fails it is as much a PR issue as it a tech one.
A further thing we have noticed is that if you do your homework right and figure out what questions you want the crowd to answer when testing your app, site etc. the data you get will be of value to the marketing team as well as the IT department.
As we all know, you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression and with an app the impression you give is based around what the app looks like on the consumers’ device, how quickly it loads and how intuitive its features are. All of these points are as much technology issues as they are marketing and with the crowd you can get to the bottom of these quickly and effectively.
In the old world the focus group was the domain of the marketing team, we trusted them to get it right and made decisions based on the group. Today the crowd provides incredible power. Applause has a global network of 100,000 testers who; like you and me have devices, opinions and digital experience. So for a global product launch, you can run a global focus group that would be the envy of your CMO.
So what happens next? The next time you hear marketing are set to launch a new app, ask them about what focus group work they will be undertaking and see what answer you get. If you offer to provide them with the insight they are looking for and with a way that will ensure its crisis comms plan won’t be needed, they will love you forever and for that matter will ensure both IT and Marketing get the most from crowd testing.
