In a previous blog, I looked at L&T Infotech’s efforts in automation, and in particular around data, from an analytics and test data management point of view (see the blog here). In this blog, I take a look at recent advances L&T Infotech (LTI) has made in User Experience (UX) testing that go way beyond traditional testing approaches.

UX Testing Expanding to Crowd Testing

Before we go into more detail around LTI’s UX service offering, let’s take a step back.

UX testing is a major theme within digital testing, and rising. At this point, most UX testing offerings group together standalone UX testing offerings. These include accessibility testing (mostly a regulated area driven by the U.S. for providing disabled citizens the opportunity to interact with websites); performance testing from an end-user perspective (assessing network latency times across locations); and assessing the impact of websites and mobile apps on the device itself (e.g. CPU, memory).

Crowd testing is playing an increasing role in the context of UX testing. Crowd testing has expanded its value proposition from inexpensive exploratory and usability testing to bring a structured service, identifying users in terms of geographies, languages, devices, browsers, and connectivity providers. And there’s more to it: crowd testing is also shifting the location of test execution from the labs to real life, homes, and in-transit. (I have also blogged about crowd testing here).

The UX testing journey is only just beginning – UX testing must expand from niche activities (UX-based performance testing, or regulatory accessibility testing) and become a larger and more comprehensive offering. And surely, crowd testing will have to reduce reliance on hundreds or thousands of individual testers for each project. Also, IP and accelerators have to be part of the journey towards service industrialization and repeatability.

LTI’s Advances in UX Testing

In 2016, LTI unveiled a UX testing portal that joins the dots across UX testing offerings. Digital Customer Experience (DiCE), provides a central place for several of the UX testing activities we have mentioned above. Among its features, DiCE includes benchmarking across five broad themes: perception, discoverability, accessibility, performance, and omni-channel. These themes sound broad in nature but are actually based on measuring very concrete items (20 in total). Examples of such items include broken links, workflow, page size, and response time.

We think the real USP of DiCE lies in its MUTE functionality. MUTE does precisely the opposite of what its names suggests: it expresses the reactions and feelings of end-users when interacting with a mobile or website or any other application! MUTE relies on a series of body sensors and voice recognition. It also assesses how the human brain reacts to stimuli. In practical terms, end-users wear a helmet that enables LTI to track brain waves across several parameters (e.g. visual appeal, patience, thinking). MUTE is looking to assess how easy interactions are to complete, identify user emotions, and assess user satisfaction.

In short, LTI has introduced a bit of medical science to UX. Time will tell if MUTE is an add-on to UX or will become an important element of any UX offering.

Early findings from client deployments show that MUTE helps to refine customer segmentation, with age, nationality, and location showing differences across the three items it measures.

We are pleased to see a firm such as L&T Infotech developing UX in unexpected directions, expanding way beyond traditional testing. This is the beginning for UX testing. Stay tuned.