VEGAS, the App - quality considerations

09/09/2014

Las Vegas welcomed nearly 40 million visitors in 2013, the majority of whom came to town looking for coveted tickets to their favorite event. A few days ago Digital Management, Inc. (DMI) and Brand Vegas announced the availability of VEGAS, the App, designed specifically for mobile platforms.

We asked AQuA-Endorsed Developer, Golden Gekko (a DMI company), about the quality-related challenges associated with the development of the app.

So, what’s the app?

The brainchild of Brand Vegas, a leading Las Vegas ticketing company, the app provides travelers with a safe, secure and easy-to-use platform to research and purchase tickets for any event in the area. From the opening screen to the financial transaction, the consumer never leaves the app. 

Available for iOS and Android platforms, the app includes the ability to browse based on location and sort by category, event type or price. Users instantly receive an electronic copy of ticket vouchers and receipts that are automatically stored on the mobile device. Once purchased, the electronic voucher can be presented with a photo ID at the box office.

What about the quality challenges relating to a user-sensitive app?

We created a number of Change Requests to update the design/ notification messages throughout the app to improve the user interface and also the user experience.   The client also requested some changes in the app flow for this purpose as part of their regular feedback.

Testing on a wide-range of supported devices with various screen sizes was also a challenge as we needed to make sure design worked on all the supported devices while taking into consideration some native limitations of Android devices. We also checked there were no technical text errors in the app.

We made sure app speed was acceptable especially on the purchasing screen so the user would not be discouraged to purchase tickets via the app.

We made sure that the purchase module was secured by checking the manifest to make sure it had https permissions as stated in the AQuA Testing Criteria. And as part of the payment feature of the app, we clear the credit card details when purchasing initially fails for whatever reason, and every time the purchase is completed.

Our experience with testing against the AQuA criteria helped us to discover common bugs at an early stage of the process (e.g checking app stability, network loss while downloading resource, suspending the app while executing etc) which is good, as the cost of fixing an issue when discovered very early is lower compared to the cost when the errors are discovered at the late stage of development.

We also created a back-office for this project where events to be displayed in the app are to be created and maintained. This resulted to a lot of integration testing within the back office itself (one feature to another) and back-office against the mobile apps and the web app which adds to the challenges in testing.

Vegas – the app is featured in the AQuA Quality App Directory by AQuA Member (with Trusted Status) Golden Gekko (a DMI Company) and has been awarded the status of AQuA Verified App.  This means it has passed the AQuA Testing Criteria for iOS and Android apps and is considered by AQuA to be of a high quality.

› back