Yogesh is a software quality professional with 14+ years of software testing experience, a passionate blogger, scrum master, and kanban advocate, from Pune, India. You can find out more about his testing experience on his blog, QA-QC Arena.
Why it’s important to be a User first; then a Tester
In this blog post, I would like to share some of my experiences and bugs I found in various apps while I was simply using them for my personal interest.
YouTube Studio – Sorting
Recently; I was using the YouTube Studio app on my Android-based smartphone. In YouTube Studio, I was accessing various modules (not in any specific order), such as Dashboard, Videos, Playlists, Comments, Analytics, etc. While accessing the Videos section, I did use available sorting options such as Most recent, Most viewed. With Most viewed sorting options, I observed something strange. All Videos – Most viewed sorting wasn’t working appropriately.
I did try multiple things (clearing cache, clearing data, re-login) and was able to reproduce the Bug. Then I reported this Bug on YouTube Studio’s Twitter handle and Facebook page. They actually replied and asked if this issue was happening on other devices too, and they suggested that I reinstall the app. I did just that and after reinstalling the app, I was able to reproduce the Bug. Believe me, I was not testing this app, I was just using it, so I simply stumbled upon this bug without any intention of finding issues.
Below are a few more experiences from the past, where I found similar errors while using apps:
Facebook App – Synchronization
Facebook Mobile App (Android version – 137.0.0.24.91) and Web were not in sync.
Facebook App – Facebook Memories
After sharing the memory, No. of Years Ago value & original Album Date & Time were getting displayed incorrectly.
Facebook App – Post reaction count
Post reaction (Likes, emoticons such as “Haha”) count was getting displayed incorrectly
There are more such examples with the applications I use daily, but I will conclude the list here.
In conclusion, as a Software Tester, finding and reporting Bugs is one of the crucial tasks; however, it makes more sense if a Tester can find and report the Bugs which an end-user doesn’t wish to see.
I agree none of the above Bugs were Critical or High in nature (for me as a User). But; as a User, I still don’t wish to see them happening.
In all the above cases, I was using (not testing) the respective apps. That’s why… Be a User first; then a Tester: as a Software Tester, think of using the Software (of course; in addition to Testing the Software).
What are your thoughts on this?
