UI-Test: a model-based framework for visual UI testing– qualitative and quantitative evaluation

Abstract

During the testing stage in the software development life cycle, developers can take advantage of combining the requirements specification with the testing specification. This will allow the specification of the tests to require less manual effort, since, they can be defined or generated automatically from the require-ments specification. The requirements specification will thus be based on a more structured language, gaining in quality and reducing ambiguity, incon-sistency, and inaccuracy. In this research work, the UI-Test model-based meth-odological framework and its tool support are proposed. Both of these can gen-erate evidence based on the specification of agile user stories that are used in the validation of the functional requirements that must be included in the final version of the user interfaces of the developed software. Our proposal makes use of two model transformations to obtain the test scripts from user stories that will be applied in the process using SikuliX for automated visual UI testing. The results of the empirical evaluation of the effectiveness and user experience of the framework and its tool support suggest that the UI-Test tool can benefit testers by confirming that the actions proposed in the user stories can be run on the UIs.