Quality Assurance

Helps to make sure that your Digital product behaves as intended. It is the most widespread kind of testing. 

Testing that is carried out to fnd out how fast different parts of the product work under different workloads. Some web-based products could be used to by millions of people at the same time, so it is important to test whether or not a product can cope with that amount of traffic. 

Testing includes: 

• load testing 
• stress testing 
• soak testing 
• performance monitoring 

This is carried out to make sure that the digital product protects the data that it stores without losing any functionality. This area of testing os becoming more and more important due to the large number of Digital Products that can be accessed via the internet and the amount of sensitive data they hold. 

The six basic concepts of testing are:

• confidentiality 
• intergrity 
• authentication
• authorisation 
• availability
• non-repudation

When testing the stablity, this usually refers to testing the procedure of 'Load Testing'. This can be a part of Performance Testing and include the following:

• intentionally try to perform actions that are not expected by product to see if planned error message appears/product continues to run
• run/load program at the same time as others to check for conflicts
• employ test users of verying ability - high skill to try and break product; low skill to check they don't unintentionally cause it to break
• get a number of people to use it at the same time (stress/load testing) to see if product can function as normal

Very important for businesses as they are required by law to ensure that their websites are accessible to as broad a range of visitors as possible - relates to Disability Discrtimination Act 1999.

Methods of testing:

• asking test users with disability to test product
• observe someone using the form and use a service that checks/gives an accessiblity rating

This refers to the ease-of-use of a product for the general user. It takes into consideration factors such as consistency of user interface and how easy it is for the user to use.

It is done to measure the level of Usability, to provide a better understanding of how the user interacts with the application, what makes them stick to our product and what makes them leave.

• To get suggestions from target audience
• To see if it is suitable for different levels of computer skills of users
• To see if it is suitable for the target age range
• To see if it is suitable for different levels of language ability
• To see if it is suitable for both genders 
• To see if it is suitable for use in different locations, e.g. noisy classroom