Table of Contents
Exploratory Testing Guidelines With Examples
1. Test Navigation Menu And Links
When you have just started exploratory testing for any software application, start to test with navigation menus first. Check whether all the functionalities of the navigation menu items work properly. After testing menus, go through all the links located on the header and footer area. Check the links for testing whether linked to the proper page or have not any page not found error.
2. Test Search And Filtering Functionality
Try to search by entering the space character and observing the results. Check the search functionality by both clicking on the search button and pressing enter key on the keyboard. You can also search for different terms and check the search results.
3. Test Form Submission Functionality
You can check the form submission functionality for any type of form such as a registration form, order entry form, inquiry form, etc. In order to check this functionality, try to submit the form without entering any field and observe the result. You should also check whether you can submit the form by leaving any required field blank or entering all the required fields. Try to submit the form by entering text on the numeric field and entering special characters on any text field.
4. Test User Registration, Login, And User Account
For testing user registration functionality, try to register a new user account using all of the available options such as registering with email and the details, registering with a Gmail account, and other social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
While testing login functionality, at first try to login by entering invalid login data and then submit the login form without leaving any of the fields (i.e. user name or password) blank. Go to forget password link and submit an unregistered email and observe whether an error will occur or not.
5. Test Upload/Download And Import/Export Functionalities
Try to upload images, documents, or videos on their respective file upload files. Check the upload functionality for different types of files having different sizes (i.e. small or large) and also try to upload duplicate named files, file names having special characters and spaces.
Test whether the file gets exported in the proper file extension and it can be opened with their respective software. Also, check the export functionality for the files with very large sizes. You can check the file import functionality by testing whether the specified file type can be imported.
6. Test GUI And Usability
You should check all the fields such as text box, radio options, drop-down lists, etc are aligning properly in order to test the GUI and usability of the application. You should also check whether disabled fields are greying out and users are not able to set focus on the fields. Test if the drop-down list options are readable and not truncated due to the field size limit. You should observe whether the items on the list or grid view display with proper column or row spacing. Confirm whether duplicate records are displayed there.
7. Test Video Playing Functionality
1 Comment
Thank you for providing such an excellent guide on exploratory testing.