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Try for freeDoes your product resonate with your target audience? To make sure your product aligns with the business requirements and satisfies the end-user goal, make use of persona testing, a powerful strategy to achieve this alignment. This approach transcends traditional testing practices by focusing on the end-users, their behaviors, and the unique personas that represent them.
Now, the real question is, how can you harness its potential to create user-centric, impactful products? This blog will help you understand every detail you need to know about persona testing and how you can make use of it to create a flawless and the most satisfying product for users.
Table Of Contents
What Is Persona? What Is Persona Testing?
Let’s break this term down: Persona – In general terms, a persona refers to the role or character that an individual assumes in various aspects of life. It can encompass different aspects of a person’s identity, behavior, and social roles. Now, let’s see what persona testing is.
Persona testing is a software testing approach that involves designing and executing test scenarios based on user personas. They are nothing but fictional representations of different types of users who might interact with an application.
(Like how different superheroes have different superpowers to save the universe, different users have different purposes to use the same application)
How Personas Are Created?
User personas are created through previous research, interviews, or surveys with real end-users.
Then, testers will create test cases and user scenarios that mimic the behavior of these personas, considering their unique characteristics, goals, and preferences.
Example – I will take Testsigma as an example to give you a brief idea about how testers will create personas. As you might know, Testsigma is a low-code cloud-based test automation tool that automates web, desktop, mobile, and API tests in one place.
Now, for testers to create personas, they will determine the various target audiences of Testsigma. Target audiences are people who will use the product in the future to automate testing. After they identify the audience, they will create user personas and test cases based on that. So, the personas for Testsigma would be,
- Quality Assurance Engineers/Testers
- Developers
- Project Managers
- Business Owners, and such.
Why Is Persona-Based Testing Important?
With persona testing, you can gain valuable insights into how real users will use the product for their needs on a regular basis. Persona based testing will give you a detailed idea about who your end-users are and how your product will help solve their problem.
By simulating real-world user interactions, you can identify potential issues and ensure that the product meets the needs and expectations of diverse user groups.
Another benefit is that you will be able to review your user experience and see if it is easy for users to navigate through your product.
Ultimately, developers/testers can effectively validate that the product aligns with the business requirements and user expectations.
How To Implement Persona Testing
Implementing persona based testing is very interesting. Let’s see how. It involves the following steps,
1. User Analysis and Research
The first step is to research who your end-users are and to identify their objectives and more. You can do so with surveys, interviews, or any form of feedback from real users.
2. Creating User Personas
As discussed above, testers will create personas with the research findings. The personas represent different end users who will utilize the software.
3. Create Test Cases
After the user personas are created, develop test cases for each persona. These test cases will mimic how each persona is expected to interact with the software.
4. Execute Test Cases
Once the test cases are created, execute them manually or using automated testing tools. The testing should be done in a production-like environment, simulating how users engage with the software in real-world scenarios.
Creating Persona Test Cases
As we discussed above, creating persona test cases involves a few steps before it, like identifying the target audience and their scenarios. Now, we will create test cases for a certain persona to understand how test cases vary from persona to persona.
To simplify this, I will take a travel application as an example. The different user personas for this application will be as follows,
- The end user who is trying to book a plane ticket/hotel reservation/ resort stay
- Admin who is responsible for managing everything on the application
- Business owners who are trying to update their details on the application and more.
Let’s take the ‘end-user’ persona to create test cases for a travel application.
User Persona – End-user
Test Scenario – A user trying to book tickets using the travel application site
Imagine a user is trying to book tickets using a travel web application like Booking.com. I am going to create test cases for Booking.com from an end-user perspective. The test cases for the above scenario will be as follows:
Sample Test Cases
- Navigate to the website (https://www.booking.com/)
- Login/sign up for the application using the credentials
- Select the from and to details along with date details, return details, and passenger class.
- Click on Search Flights
- Book a flight after comparing the dates, price, time, etc.
- Check out to make the payment
- Wait for booking confirmation and ensure you receive e-tickets via email.
- Then, log out or manage your tickets.
How To Perform Persona Testing?
Now, consider the same example stated above. I will take the end-user persona and create test cases for a user who is trying to book a flight ticket.
Like always, automate testing for high efficiency and accurate results.
I will demonstrate how you can automate web application testing using Testsigma for the above persona. As you might already know, Testsigma is a low-code, cloud-based, AI-driven test automation platform that supports web, mobile, and desktop apps and API testing in one place.
We know the persona and the application we are going to test, so let’s start creating test cases using Testsigma.
With Testsigma, creating test cases is very simple and quick, as it supports NLPs. That is, one can create test cases using simple English. It doesn’t support just that. It further supports record-and-play feature and code-based testing with Java.
It makes testing more accessible and a perfect choice for both technical and non-technical users, as it supports both codeless testing and code-based testing in one place.
Step 1 – Log in to the application. If not, Sign up already!
Step 2 – Start creating test steps using the appropriate NLPs. Or, use the record feature to record user interactions and create them as automated tests.
Step 3 – After creating the test cases, click on the Run button to execute them.
Step 4 – After successful test execution, you will get detailed test results.
Now, testers will share the test results with the development team. Now, developers will start working on any identified bugs and update the bug-fixing status to the testing team. Now, testers will again retest the application with the same test cases (re-run the test cases) to check that the bugs are fixed and the application is working as expected. That is what you call automated regression testing.
Conclusion
Persona testing is an intriguing way to evaluate a software’s user experience. By putting your users at the forefront and understanding their diverse needs, you pave the way for a more intuitive, engaging, and successful product.
Implementing persona testing as a regular practice empowers businesses to stay attuned to user expectations, fostering continuous improvement and innovation in the ever-evolving landscape of digital experiences.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do persona-based requirements make it easier to test software?
Yes, persona-based testing makes software testing more efficient. That is because, with user personas, you will be able to understand more about your end-user requirements and how easy it is for them to use your software.
Personas bring a human touch to testing by replicating real user interactions to identify important flaws and improve software quality. They offer insights into diverse user interactions with the platform.
