Best Practices: Wearable Device Testing for Reliable Performance

With the advent of technological surge, wearable devices are becoming increasingly popular these days. Whether it is the healthcare sector or the fitness industry, the devices have made their place in many sectors. So, QA engineers are prioritizing wearable device testing to overcome the challenges to increase the performance and reliability of these electronic devices.

Let’s discuss the importance of testing for wearable devices, key areas to focus on, and best practices to tackle challenges to successfully optimize the testing process.

Importance Of Wearable Device Testing

Wearable health devices are great for tracking the results of our physical health, vital signs, and other health-related signs that are necessary to enhance our overall health performance. So, wearable testing services here play a significant role in accurately measuring all the signs to meet real-world problems and user satisfaction.

Before briefly examining the importance of wearable devices, one should know about wearable device testing and its types.

Wearable testing or testing of wearable devices such as fitness trackers, smart watches, or location trackers should have undergone several testing processes, including functional, UI, compatibility, and other testing methodologies, to meet real-life scenarios and provide accurate testing results about your body’s vital health signs.

Types Of Wearable Devices

Wearable devices are advanced electronic devices that are capable of tracking real-time scenarios that can be worn on our body parts and connected to our mobile or laptops to provide results of our body symptoms. The devices coming under this category include:

• Fitness Tracker: One of the most popular used wearables for health enthusiasm while doing exercises such as running, or walking.
• Smart Watches: These are mostly regarded as common fashion accessories that suit the overall outfits. Apart from the styling object, they provide all kinds of mobile notifications on the screen and digital time.
• Implantable: The type of wearable device is implanted under the body to track major health signs such as checking the insulin level, heart performance, etc.

Importance Of  Wearable Device Testing

Here comes the crucial part of knowing the importance of the wearable testing process in ensuring accuracy in wearable device testing such as:

• With several testing methodologies, the testing engineers ensure the developed products are free from errors, providing accurate results as per your health signs and meeting the user’s satisfaction.
• Testing processes like automation testing methodologies check the bugs in codes from early stages to prevent malfunctions after releasing them to the end users.

Also Read: Step-by-Step Guide For Salesforce Performance Testing Approach

Top Key Testing Areas Of Wearable Devices

Let’s discuss how to test wearable devices effectively by applying several testing methodologies and focusing on different testing areas.

1. Functional Testing

While talking about functional testing services play an important role in checking the overall functionality of various testing methodologies, such as –

• Exploratory testing: In the first stage of checking device functionalities, the functionality of the devices is tested to determine the errors associated with them and create a detailed report on them.
• Creating Test Case Scenarios: After knowing the test requirements, the testers determine different test case scenarios to check the components that should meet the user’s demand. The test scenarios include use cases, feedback, and other real-user experiences.
• Checking the functionality of different OS: To test the compatibility of wearable devices in different OS such as Android, Mac OS, etc. Also, for better implementation, the functionality, such as heart rate, sleep patterns, blood pressure, etc., should be tested in a real-world environment.
• Then check for the automation testing parts to ensure all the functionalities are working properly and the final product is free from any error.

Another part of functionality testing services includes checking the integration for any software and hardware compatibilities by outlining the project requirements and accessibilities to several new functionalities that contribute to overall business profit.

2. Performance Testing

Performance testing is one of the major testing methodologies used to check the overall performance of wearables when optimizing wearable device testing processes. These are performed to check:

• Assessing speed: The testing includes checking the device accessibility under various conditions, such as determining the heart rate and blood pressure and accurately measuring speed.
• Responsiveness: This factor in performance testing service determines the time of interaction between the input data and the possible outcomes that affect the user experience.
• Battery Life: Battery life provides data about how much backup will be carried out by the device per day once charged.
• Another way to check out the performance testing is by testing the devices in several stress conditions using the following testing techniques.

1. Load testing: The load testing determines the amount of stress the device can take on itself by virtually allowing multiple users to work on several functionalities simultaneously.

2. Stress Testing: It is one of the effective wearable device testing techniques that determine the device’s behavior in extreme conditions to know the breaking points where the device may fail to respond and provide solutions to resolve them.

3. Soak testing: The significance of soak testing is to find out the issues that may happen after using it many times in the long run to ensure the device’s stability.

4. Spike Testing: The testing determines the device’s system ability to check whether the device’s internal setting is scalable enough to adapt to new technology changes as per the user demand.

3. User Experience Testing

It is a type of reliable testing method for wearable devices to test the usability of the developed wearable devices by the end users. For the best practices of UX testing, the following steps can be applied such as:

• Defining The Feedback Loops: A feedback loop is simply a direct connection between the device and the end user to access the insights by doing different surveys and user testing scenarios.
• Testing Of Prototypes: Prototype testing detects the overall usability issues from the early stage, which helps save a lot of time and resources in understanding the user’s perspective of the product’s features.
• Using UX Metrics: For taking data-driven approaches, the UX metrics such as finding the task success percentage, bounce rate, and user engagement help to meet the user’s demand for a product’s feature.
• Another important user experience testing service is the design of an interface that must be user-friendly and easily navigable to find the desired results.

4. Security Testing

Security testing is a must-step for testers to provide the utmost security for the device’s internal functionalities along with the user’s data. The motive of the testing includes:

1. The security testing services must provide the user’s input data.

As wearable devices need to be connected to their mobile or laptops, which contain sensitive data, there is a chance of data loss. So, checking databases and cross-site scripting helps protect against other cyber-attacks.

The testing can be done in several methodologies, including:

• Penetration Testing: To ensure the potential threats may be associated with the device, the testers stimulate threats that act as real attacks and find the solution to possible malicious attacks.
• Auditing: The auditing process determines the system’s each line of code should run properly to mitigate internal defects.
• Assessment Of Risk: The assessment determines the risk percentage of the system from a low to high scale. This type of security testing determines the size of risks and mitigates them.
• Ethical Hacking: It is not like a malicious attack. The objective is to find the security flaws in the wearable devices’ internal structure.

2. Major security or vulnerabilities associated with wearable devices and solutions are –

• Checking The Authorization: The devices connected to your mobile devices have the chance of unauthorized access to the user’s private data, such as passwords, which can be resolved by leveraging two-factor authentications.
• Network security: There are chances of network vulnerabilities while running on different mobile application browsers. So, to mitigate this, adding different security features may be a suitable option to avoid vulnerabilities.
• Compliance testing: This testing of security testing includes maintaining the security standard protocols.

Also Read: API Testing in Insurance Software: Integration with Third Parties

Best Practices for Reliable Performance Of Wearable Devices Testing

The main topic of this blog is wearable device quality assurance practices to maximize the functionality and durability of wearable devices in real-world scenarios. Let’s discuss these practices thoroughly.

1. Develop A Comprehensive Test Plan

1.1 Define Clear Objectives And Scope –

• The first step in developing a test plan is to find your test objectives and goals. To find the test objectives, you should consider certain things, such as what type of features or functionalities should be added to the testing process.
• Also, addressing different test cases, like identifying the patterns or components that should go for the testing and collaborating with your client to know what other additional features they may need.
• Then, set your testing goal to align with the business objectives. For that, you have to separate the functional, and non-functional objectives of wearable devices to ensure the quality of the product should not get hampered.

1.2 Outline Test Cases and Test Scenarios –

• To write a detailed test case, decide the functionalities and features that are key approaches to wearable device testing that should be validated while undergoing the testing process.
• So, for good test case practice, decide what part should require manual testing and what parts need to be tested automatically using different automatic testing tools.
• After you write the test cases, it is time to examine them in different testing scenarios. In simple words, the test case is written by using the test scenarios.

2. Use Real-World Scenarios

To determine the wearable device testing, the best practice should include the test in real-world scenarios such as:

For actual usage conditions, the testers should follow the following steps such as-

• The testers must use the user stories or feedback to know the user’s demand and accordingly set their goal. You can also use the user personals that are frictional users as per your research. User stories are different from the personas. In general, short statements or elements are known as user stories. You can implement both of these options to create a realistic task to check the response of real users.
• Another way is to test your prototypes using real content. For instance, if you are doing wearable testing, then use real content data such as blood pressure rates, step counting, and other relevant wearable device data. It helps to check the different feature’s functionality, leading to building the credibility of your developed product.
• The next thing you can do is use the appropriate tool to enhance the key features of your designs, layouts, complexity, and navigation. Track the responsiveness features through these tools.
• Another best thing you can do to simulate your testing is to test your devices by real users. Find the feedback and implement it on your test as per their perspectives to meet their expectations after releasing it to the end users.

3. Automated Testing Tools

Automated tools are important while performing wearable testing services to enhance the testing process and provide the outcome with minimum risk. Let’s discuss some of the advantages and popular tools to test your wearable devices.

Advantages Of Automation in Repetitive Tasks

• Among all the advantages of automation testing, test coverage is a basic benefit. These tools help perform repetitive tasks by minimizing the risk of human error; thus, more test coverages are provided. Mainly, the regression test runs on different browsers and operating systems, leading to higher test coverages without intervening in existing features.
• Another best thing you can avail of is you can save your cost in the long run. Though the initial cost of installation of these tools may be expensive, in the future, the tools can effectively save you money by detecting bugs early, avoiding human interventions, and reducing errors, leading to the early release of your product. Also, the tools can reuse the test cases for new device developments.
• The automated tools follow wearable device testing guidelines repeatedly and constantly check the coding patterns to determine possible errors and fix them. That leads to accurate data validation and clear outcomes.
• The best way to use these automatic testing tools is to incorporate them in the early stage of development, leading to early bug finding in each coding step. That reduces the rework and also saves you money.
• If you are developing a high-volume wearable device with lots of features, then these tools examine each function simultaneously and provide you with each test report despite heavy load conditions.
• Automated tools with CI/CD integrations help to provide feedback from users easily. These integrations help developers to get feedback on each change of code.

Some Popular tools And Software for Automatic Testing

The popular tools and software used to test wearable device testing include:

• Test Grid: The automatic testing tool leverages AI and ML to perform the test cases in real devices. This tool supports all types of browsers, and operating systems can be integrated into other modules.
• Acceleq: A codeless automation testing tool that allows developers to write and run test cases with zero or less coding. It provides faster test case execution for parallel tests.
• Katalon Studio: It provides a no-code testing platform to record the playback of test cases with the pre-existing AI code. It also provides real-time tracking of bugs and feedback facility to the testers.
• Selenium: One of the popular open-source automatic testing tools that is used for ensuring accuracy in wearable device testing. It supports different programming languages, cross-browser compatibility, and other module integration facilities for effective testing processes.
• Appium: If you are using this tool, then you can test your wearable devices on mobile devices efficiently. It has been gaining popularity in providing the best mobile testing tool that can be integrated into different testing environments.

 4. Manual Testing

Manual testing of wearable devices is an important part of the testing objectives that help in many ways performed by the human testers. Let’s discuss the importance and the applicable area.

4.1 Importance Of Human Oversight

• No test is covered without human intervention. The testers often write test cases and perform exploratory testing without using automation tools. In general, QA engineers test the software applications or devices to check the software’s behavior and overall functionality.
• The importance of human oversight in testing the device performance by acting as real users to check the behavior and responsiveness of the apps’ features.
• The human testers check the usability and scalability and perform exploratory testing that cannot be performed by automated tools. Above all the advantages, there are certain limitations, such as taking a lot of time to execute and find the error and not performing repetitive tasks, leading to human error. So, human testers use certain automated tools.

4.2 Situations where Manual testing is essential

There are several situations where manual testing is mandatory, such as exploratory testing, beta testing, user acceptance testing, ad-hoc testing, beta testing, error guessing, and other complex parts of the testing.

Other situations where human interventions are necessary include determining the product quality, installing the automation tools and their setup process, and discussing the feedback to act on them. This is when manual testing comes to the frame. Also, some manual testing tools are available to run the test cases.

5. Continuous Testing and Feedback

One of the key approaches to wearable device testing is continuously testing the test cases on every code change and looking for feedback to implement this. Let’s find out how the technique helps in providing the best outcomes.

5.1 Regular Updates and Testing Cycles

To make your wearable device error-free and from other malfunctions regular updates of the key functionalities help to minimize the bugs or unauthorized access that may enter the device prototypes to steal the users’ data and harm the device’s functionalities.

So, the testers should always regularly monitor the testing cycles by using several automatic testing tools that check the feedback and changes that may be required to upgrade the features to meet the user’s expectations.

5.2 Incorporating User Feedback for Improvements

For a better understanding of testing objectives and goals, testers should always rely on user feedback and act on it to reduce any kind of future dissatisfaction that may be faced by the end users that affect customer satisfaction.

To improve the feedback loop, human testers take the help of automatic testing methods to maximize the test coverage in every stage of development providing better feedback and analysis reports to enhance the productivity of the final product. Many testers are also incorporating these methods to test the wearable devices’ functionalities.

Also Read: How to Conduct Effective Performance Testing on Retail Apps?

Common Challenges and Solutions of Wearable Device Testing

In the world of wearable technology, gadgets like fitness trackers and wearables have become essential companions, giving users information about their everyday activities and health. However, programmers face particular difficulties specific to each kind of wearable when they set out to integrate apps with these devices.

Though there are many practical uses for these tiny devices, creating wearable applications is challenging. We will go over some of the main issues that programmers of wearable apps are now facing with their apps.

1. Battery Life Testing

Do you know the applications for which consumer more battery is rejected by the app stores? The battery capacity lowers down based on the device size. The battery consumption increases when multiple functions operate in the background. The developers must deal with this issue to design a battery-efficient solution for wearable app development.

The most necessary factor to look for when testing for wearable devices is battery usage & memory. Users always choose an application that consumes less power & memory. It also improves the application that is being removed since no one keeps updating their application. Wearable gadgets have small batteries, and that’s why you should be concerned about battery consumption.

Solution:

To solve this issue, you have to develop an application that consumes energy in a balanced manner. Design a wearable application that is straightforward. While developing the application, the developer must personalize the code to consume less power and memory space. The wearable device that consumes less power and space performs better.

2. Interoperability Issues

Interoperability issues arise when differences in data formats, standards & protocols between multiple technology & EHR systems. Multiple wearable devices & health applications are designed to comply with interoperable standards, for example, FHIR & HL7, ensuring that the information they produce will be easily exchanged & understood across multiple healthcare systems.

The common changes that arise in interoperability in IoT are a lack of standardization, security concerns, limited resources, and data management. Since the IoT landscape continues evolving, interoperability remains necessary. This is the key to enabling next-gen IoT solutions to drive innovation across various industries.

Solution

To ensure smooth data integration and transfer, specific data standards and interoperability standards like HL7 FHIR must be followed.

3. Data Privacy and Security

Numerous wearable apps experience data privacy breaches on a daily basis. Consequently, privacy is a critical consideration for wearable app development firms at every stage of the process. Data on health metrics, daily habits, and location details are generated through such devices. The wearable device comes with a sensor that is used to collect, store & transmit the biometric user data. The following data is basically sent to the smartphone, tablet & cloud-based platforms.

Updates & improvements are essential to the creation of wearable app technology. The support and development teams are always faced with the task of adding new features and being able to address any bugs that come up.

This implies that you must locate a trustworthy wearable development agency that can provide you with continuous assistance for the most recent wearable app updates. The possibility of threats and bugs is widely increasing, and that’s why concerns on behalf of security and data privacy are necessary.

Solution

A protected wearable device ensures long-term connections, improves interaction, and retains customers. To boost customer trust, wearable app developers need to take into account efficient security techniques. Apps should have sophisticated security features to safeguard sensitive data. They might select effective communication and precise privacy settings to maximize the whole experience.

Also, the program has to receive frequent improvements in safety. Every other day, professionals in this field create quick, profitable, and efficient changes. In this situation, the app needs to stay aware of advanced features & technologies. By successfully integrating robust security measures and compliance with regulations, the security and privacy issues can be resolved.

Adopt Best Practices for Wearable Testing Today!

One in three Americans uses wearable technology! According to reports, thirty percent of people on the planet will own wearable technology by 2025. It is anticipated that wearable app development technologies will generate more than $70 billion in revenue. These statistics show the future of wearable devices and the necessity of development and testing.

The development of wearable technology presents new difficulties for designers and programmers to solve. This is where guidelines for wearable device testing are useful. However, every obstacle offers a different chance for you to build wearables with improved usability, accessibility, and seamless functioning.

Simplifying the layout for wearable devices is the most important thing to remember. By concentrating on the above-discussed content, several best practices and obstacles have been covered. Make use of these to improve your wearable design.