MT4A: a no-programming test automation framework for Android applications

Abstract

The growing dependency of our society on increasingly complex software systems, combining mobile and cloud-based applications and services, makes the test activities even more important and challenging. However, sometimes software tests are not properly performed due to tight deadlines, due to the time and skills required to develop and execute the tests or because the developers are too optimistic about possible faults in their own code. Although there are several frameworks for mobile test automation, they usually require programming skills or complex configuration steps. Hence, in this paper, we propose a framework that allows creating and executing tests for Android applications without requiring programming skills. It is possible to create automated tests based on a set of pre-defined actions and it is also possible to inject data into device sensors. An experiment with programmers and non-programmers showed that both can develop and execute tests with a similar time. A real world example using a fall detection application is presented to illustrate the approach.