Interface quality control can be done better through the use of the automated GUI test. Moreover, this test is fast and inexpensive to use.
Quality control ensures that the consumer buys your products a second time. All consumer products from cars and foods to electronic goods and the like undergo this process. Even computer software applications are subject to quality control. Now,
if you have a factory that turns out large numbers of computers, software, or handheld electronic devices, wouldn't a manual quality control test for each product coming of the factory be too taxing for your employees? Fortunately, there is what we call the automated GUI test.
Graphical User Interface (GUI) enables the consumer to communicate or interact with computers, office equipment, electronic appliances, and handheld electronic devices, like MP3 players, Portable Media Players, and gaming gadgets. But how do users interact with these products? Well, GUI is a set of instructions that tells you what to do. Let us take the computer, for example. A computer has a scrollbar, menus, buttons, checkboxes, and windows that, when clicked, give you the results you want. These things buttons, checkboxes, windows and all, comprise the GUI application.
You can imagine how annoying it is to open a program with no exit box in it or a portable media with no button for play; or if there is one, you have a difficult time locating it. The Graphic User Interface then has two basic functions that allow you, the consumer, to have comfortable interaction with the device and in a manner that will not turn your hair gray. In short, user-friendly would be the popular term to use.
As part of quality control, all electronics products undergo GUI tests. The purpose of this test is to determine the functionality, relevance consistency, effectiveness, and user-friendliness of the device's GUI elements. Functionality simply means that activated buttons or menus work. You will not like it when you click a button and nothing happens, or when a cancel button performs something else. Consistency means that the position of the GUI elements are maintained all throughout. Effectiveness, relevance, and user-friendliness work together. If you like where the buttons are placed and are not distracted by, perhaps, too many of them, then there is no argument there. The GUI elements of your device are practical.
To go back to the earlier premise of your having a large company of electronic products, certainly you would be worried about your products not hitting the markets on time and holding up production as well. This is a situation that calls for automated testing. This suggests an independent application to check all aspects of the interface program. In computer software: from starting the software, checking for errors, accessing databases to saving files. This type of GUI testing application will put the computer program through all kinds of usage and will test all possible scenarios to test reliability and detect problems. They are fast and less costly than maintaining a good number of your employees on quality control duties.
Quality control is the lifeline of businesses since it ensures customers' continuing patronage. With the advent of mass produced electronic products, quality control has to catch up, and there is no better way than to employ automated GUI test applications.
