What is Field Testing: A Complete Guide

Products can sometimes fail to meet user expectations in practical scenarios. This can be due to unforeseen environmental variables, varied usage patterns, or even compatibility issues. Chances of missing these variables are more, when testing is performed in controlled environments. Hence, it is important to test the product in real-user conditions.

Field testing plays a key role here, as it allows the product to be evaluated in actual user settings. It uncovers performance issues, usability challenges, and compatibility gaps that controlled tests might miss. This helps make sure the product is reliable, user-friendly, and ready to handle various situations before it is launched.

What is Field Testing?

Field testing is the process of validating how a product, application, or system functions in real-world situations. It helps detect issues that might not show up in a controlled lab setting.

Key Points About Field Testing:

• Real-World Setting: The testing happens where the product will actually be used, like on-site or on live networks.
• User Feedback: It includes watching real users use the product to understand its performance and usability.
• Environmental Factors: It takes into account things like weather, network strength, or hardware limits that could affect how the product works.
• Main Goal: To ensure the product works well, is reliable, and meets user expectations before it is fully launched.

Who performs Field Testing?

Product managers, support teams, and product marketing teams usually perform field testing. These groups have the most access to the product during its later development stages. They give users application access, obtain feedback from them, and gather critical insights.

Why is Field Testing Needed?

Here are the other crucial reasons why field testing is important:

• Real-World Scenarios: By facilitating testing in real-world scenarios, field testing shows issues like connectivity glitches, environmental challenges, or unexpected user behavior that might not be detected in controlled tests.
• User Insights: When users interact with the product in their everyday environment, it gives an idea about the usability, accessibility, and overall satisfaction, helping you modify the product and meet their expectations.
• Pre-Launch Fixes: Identifying issues early lowers the risk of product failures, bad reviews, or expensive fixes after launch.
• Better Preparedness: It gives confidence that the product is ready for its audience, boosting the chances of a successful launch.
• Valuable Data: The feedback collected helps improve the product, plan new features, and even support sales and marketing strategies.

When Should You Perform Field Testing?

Field testing in software testing happens later in the development process, after alpha and beta testing. Since it’s available to only a limited number of users, it’s also known as a limited release or soft launch. The typical order of testing looks like this:

• Before a Product Launch: Field testing checks if the product works as expected in the real world and helps find issues that may not show up during in-house testing.
• Routine Testing: Just like regression testing and automation testing, field testing for an app ought to be conducted regularly to ensure stability.
• Testing in Different Locations: Field testing is crucial for products like mobile apps that need network services to work in various locations. For example, a navigation app must be tested for accuracy in different areas.
• For Specific Operating Systems: Field testing is necessary when launching a new version of an app that uses features specific to an operating system (Android or iOS).
• Usability and User Behavior: Field testing lets you see how real users interact with the product in their natural environments, which helps identify usability improvements. For example, a fitness app might be tested in outdoor and gym settings.

• After a New Release or Feature Update: When an app is updated, or new features are added, field testing helps make sure the changes don’t negatively affect the app’s performance.
• Compliance and Regulation Checks: Field testing ensures the product meets industry standards or local regulations. For example, testing a vehicle’s safety system to check whether it meets road safety laws.

How to Run a Field Test [with Examples]

Executing field testing involves a multi-step process from defining the objective to retesting to ensure the software application works correctly. Here’s a simple guide on how to run a field test, with examples for each step:

Step 1: Define Objectives and Goals

Before starting, decide what you want to test. Is it performance, usability, or reliability? Clear goals will help guide the test.

Example: For a mobile app, you might test GPS accuracy, battery life, and how it functions in various environments.

Step 2: Select the Test Group

Select a user group from your target audience. They should represent various demographics.

Example: For a navigation app, include daily commuters, tourists, and outdoor enthusiasts.

Step 3: Prepare the Testing Environment

Decide where the test will take place. It could be in different locations, weather, or network conditions. The environments should reflect real user conditions.

Example: For a navigation app, test in cities, rural areas, and remote places. Check how it works in traffic, various weather conditions, and different network strengths.

Step 4: Distribute and Monitor

Give clear instructions to the test group before you provide them product access. Watch how it performs, either in real-time or by checking in with users.

Example: Distribute the app to test group and ask them to use it under different network conditions. Then, track aspects including crashes, load times, and battery use.

Step 5: Collect Feedback

After the test, gather feedback from users. This could be through surveys or interviews.

Example: You can include questions related to the ease of use and set-up to understand how user-friendly the app is. You can also include questions to understand GPS accuracy, app usability, and battery drain.

Step 6: Analyze Results and Identify Issues

Look at the feedback and data. Find common issues that affect performance or user experience. Prioritize them based on severity.

Example: If a large number of users report GPS issues or battery drain, these should be fixed first.

Step 7: Implement Changes and Retest if Necessary

After fixing the issues, make changes to the product. You may need to test again to ensure the issues are resolved.

Example: Make updates to your app and retest to ensure the corrections were successful.

Key Difference Between Field Testing And Beta Testing

Both field testing and beta testing are very important methods for evaluating a product prior to its launch, although they each prioritize distinct aspects. Both assist in collecting user feedback and ensuring the product is prepared, but they occur in varied settings and stages of development.

Here’s how field testing and beta testing differ:

When and Why use BrowserStack during Field Testing

After field testing, user feedback might reveal issues like slow performance, broken features, or unexpected behavior on specific devices or browsers.

For example, some users might experience slow loading times or glitches in the interface of older browsers, while certain features might fail on specific mobile devices. These issues will tamper with the user experience and should, therefore, be fixed quickly.

BrowserStack simplifies this process by allowing you to test your application on a wide range of real browsers, devices, and operating systems.

It provides access to 3500+ real devices, browsers and OS combinations via a vast real device cloud support for effective field testing.

Key features include:

• Real-device testing: BrowserStack offers you a vast real-device cloud allowing you to test under real user conditions.
• Cross-browser testing: BrowserStack helps you run your tests on multiple browsers, such as Chrome, Safari, Edge, IE, and more.
• Parallel Test Execution: Enables running multiple tests simultaneously to save time.
• Scalability: BrowserStack supports real-device and parallel testing on a cloud-based infrastructure and lets you run hundreds of tests across different environments.
• Test Management: Lets you create, organize, and track test cases with real-time insights and an overview of test progress.

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Advantages of Field Testing

Field testing helps you see how the product performs in the real world, making sure it works well for actual users. Here are the main benefits:

• Field testing shows how the product works in real-world conditions, providing a better understanding of its actual performance.
• It helps find hidden issues that may not show up in lab testing, like performance glitches or user behavior issues.
• Observing how real users interact with the product allows for improvements in usability and design.
• Direct feedback from real users helps prioritize the most important features and fixes.
• Exposing the product to different environments and user behaviors makes it more reliable for a wider audience.

Limitations of Field Testing

Field testing has some challenges that need to be considered when planning and analyzing the results. Here are a few common limitations:

• Field tests are done in real-world environments, so conditions can vary a lot, making them unpredictable.
• These tests are time-consuming and need a lot of resources, including a dedicated team of QAs to handle all the steps.
• It can be risky to share the mobile app access to end-users, even in small numbers, without first guiding them on how to use the features.
• Setting up, monitoring, and collecting data can take a lot of time, especially over long periods in real-life settings.
• Field testing can be expensive because it requires equipment, logistics, and sometimes offering incentives to participants.

Best Practices for Field Testing

Here are some best practices for field testing that can help you deliver a high-quality mobile app to your users:

• Do the field test only after completing regression tests to make sure the app functions correctly.
• Write test cases based on the app’s purpose and the users before starting the field test.

• Test the app under different network conditions, such as various signal strengths, speed, and network providers, to check performance and reliability.
• Choose a variety of devices that represent your target users.
• Monitor how the app affects device resources like battery life, CPU, memory, and data usage.
• Talk with your development team to see if there’s anything else to add to the test cases.
• Use monitoring tools to track performance and gather real-time feedback to identify critical issues.
• Collect both hard data and subjective feedback to get a complete understanding of the product’s performance.
• When analyzing data, understand the conditions under which the test was performed to evaluate accurately.
• Work on the improvements based on the results and, if required, conduct retests to validate the changes.

Conclusion

Field testing is important to make sure your product works well in real-life situations. It gives you useful insights into how reliable, easy to use, and effective your product is. It helps find issues that might not show up in regular tests, which leads to better quality and happier users.

For successful field testing, define clear goals, pick the right group of testers, and gather both numbers and feedback from users.

Use tools like BrowserStack to test your applications on a range of real devices to better understand how your app performs under different user conditions and platforms.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the differences between In-house Testing and Field Testing

In-house testing is done in a controlled setting where conditions are simulated to check how the product performs. Field testing, however, happens in real-life environments with actual users, giving you a clearer idea of how the product works in everyday situations.

2. What happens if you fail a field test?

If a field test fails, it means the product has issues that need fixing. User feedback helps find these issues, and changes are made before the product is re-tested or launched, ensuring it meets user needs and works well in real-world conditions.