Advanced automated visual validation testing

In this era of digital transformation, clients have been demanding shorter and quicker releases. Shorter and quicker releases mean your team should not only be able to develop features at the required pace but also test and release them at a sustainable pace. The QA and automation industry has been successful to a decent extent in implementing automated acceptance tests, however, these tests do not guarantee that the look and feel of the application look accurate. Hence, we need to introduce another layer at the top of the pyramid which will validate the UI of the application through automated techniques. User interface plays an important role in the client's business and some organisations release new features, fancy CSS regularly that support multiple browsers, multiple Operating systems, mobile devices. Verifying the frontend on this browser/device/OS matrix by humans is not only extremely time consuming but also prone to human errors. Testing by humans should primarily focus on discovery and the Usability aspect leaving the repetitive and error-prone tasks to tools. Hence, automating Visual tests is becoming less of an optional activity and more of a must-have activity within the team. Ensuring visually perfect user experiences is equally important as to have the functionality working.

Main takeaways:

1. The basic concept of automated visual validation tests.
2. Challenges involved in automating visual tests.
3. How to integrate these tests as part of your CI pipeline
4. Good practices associated with automated visual validation tests

Target audience:

1. Irrespective of their experience with automating visual tests, this session has something to offer for every audience type. Any software which has an User Interface attached to it, this session would be extremely useful to them to eradicate mundane tasks related to testing the UI on several browsers and mobile devices.
2. As the Director of Quality Assurance at Axelerant, Shweta collaborates with several of her team members where they embrace continuous testing by bringing in automated tests at various levels of the pyramid and execute them in the pipeline. They have been running the visual tests too as part of the pipeline as part of the projects because they are UI heavy and need to be supported across various browsers and mobile devices.