Apps are a brand’s showcase. Beware of a tarnished image! q-leap supports its customers in measuring user experience, the famous UX.
“It’s important to test and measure the user experience – the famous UX – to ensure that your customers understand your product as you imagined it. Everyone can influence the User Experience at some point, whether in the business, in testing or even in the code.“says Sylvain Perez, CEO, q-leap. Is the path of actions required to complete a task logical and visible? Does the user get stuck at certain times? Does the user miss out on certain functions that are poorly indicated? Details such as misplaced buttons, hard-to-identify icons or misleading colors can confuse users.
This is a fast-growing business for q-leap, the Luxembourg-based software quality specialist, which sees itself as a “mediator” between end-users and digital designers. The Rue de Beaumont-based company offers a pragmatic approach, focusing on the implementation of application lifecycle management processes that enable IT teams to concentrate on their design.
Underestimating risks
Testing? “It’s always ‘we’ll see!’ or ‘I’ve tested it, it’s fine!”. In reality, testing remains the poor relation of IT,” regrets Sylvain Perez. According to Sogeti’s latest World Quality Report, the proportion of IT budgets devoted to testing and quality assurance has been falling for two years now. While it represented 35% of IT budgets in 2015 and 31% in 2016, it only reached 26% in 2017…
Underestimation of the risks involved. Anyone who has never said: “It’s okay, I’m sure it’ll work, we’ll test it in production if it doesn’t”, raise your hand! The temptation is great, but alas, it doesn’t usually end in a happy ending. The few moments gained here won’t weigh much against the time wasted explaining to users, correcting, testing – with enormous thoroughness this time – and delivering again.
As many bugs as ever
Technical tests, performance tests, security tests… q-leap has made a name for itself in Luxembourg, working for organizations such as POST Telecom, Luxaviation, Luxair, Jiway, LALUX and CHNP, to name but a few.. According to Sylvain Perez, there are always bugs. But now, the risks are greater because of the apps offered to end customers. “A poor user experience can hurt your wallet: 60% of users stop coming back to a website after a bad user experience! Not to mention the damage to your brand image and people’s perception of the goods and services you offer, even though they may be exceptional… Upstream testing can prevent 80% of bugs!“
Capitalizing on its past experience, q-leap – backed by certifications such as ISTQB, Scrum, Prince 2 and IQBBA – now presents itself as a “trusted hub” for which testing will play a differentiating role. “By implementing tests, you distinguish yourself from competitors who only work on the basis of intuition and don’t believe that optimizing the UX can lead to an increase in sales,” assures Sylvain Perez. Bear in mind that the cost of an anomaly is very different depending on the phase at which the anomaly is introduced and the phase at which it is detected. So if a design error detected during the specification phase costs 1 to correct, the same error revealed during qualification testing will cost 10, and potentially up to 100 if the software has already been deployed…“
Text: Article by Alain de Fooz, Soluxions Magazine
Photos: Taras Shypka on Unsplash
Q-Leap supports its customers in UX measurement
