Past & Near past trends
Modular, data-driven, Keyword-driven, model-based & hybrid automation frameworks were around for a long now & lots of tools and utilities are available to support these frameworks. However, there was a need for automation scripts to be created in a new language which will be easy for non-software programmers like the business and the system analyst to understand and also create automation scripts. Thus, evolved the Behavioral driven development frameworks which were also assisted by tools like Jbehave and Cucumber, etc.
Current Trend
But in recent evolving trends, new kind of software interfaces have started to evolve which has more interactive user interfaces, these changes have resulted in the boom in a software industry enabling new software for mobile phone, portables which have created new verticals in the software development and testing.
Impact on test automation
The new software will be developed to support these technologies
If new software is developed, we will be testing the same.
This also means that we need to do automation for it
In order to ensure automation on these interactive applications, an interactive automation framework will be needed which will have the capabilities to input all the gestures and validate the response from these applications.
The automation framework should be interaction-based. Interaction based test automation framework should have the capability to handle the below user actions.
Touch Interfaces
Touch
Gesture
Physical Control
Wearable
Touchless Interaction
Proximity / Location
Sound
Speech
Person Identification
Eye gaze
Physiological measurements
Specialized devices (e.g., RFID)
Novel sensors
Remotely handled interactions
App on Smart Display Device (mobile phone, tablet, …)
Special Purpose Controller
Gestures Detected by Remote Camera (With Powerful Lens)
Screen response for user interactions
Text
Images
Moving images (animations or videos)
Sound
Speech
With the remote operation, wearable devices, and Touchless interaction, haptic feedback might be essential.
The challenges in creating a test automation framework are to know about “How the user interacts and How the user receives responses from the screen?”
Apart from making sure the functionality works well, the key factor lies in a designing framework based on user interaction as a base this might be the extension to the action-based automation frameworks with the interactive features.
Conclusion
The world of sensors and displays is offering new opportunities for human-system interaction by both individuals and groups. New challenges: New opportunities in automation testing.
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