Software Testing - Testing in Practice - CoinGecko app example

Hi,

I thought that You may be interested in how to start testing in practice - what to look for, what are the typical software mistakes. To make it more interesting, I decided to show You that on "live" examples.

Today, I choose a mobile app for a well-known in Crypto world price aggregator service: CoinGecko. To make it clear, I like it very well and using it a lot - but even in such a great app there are things that can be improved - at the end that is an idea behind testing at all :D Ok, let's start :)

Environment

When You create some kind of test report You always should start with information about which version of the app you tasted, on what operating system, what hardware, etc.

So, in my case, it was:

Application Version: CoinGecko 1.17.4(3300004)

Mobile: Realme 7 Pro

Android version: 10

GUI inconsistencies

A good practice when creating GUI (Graphic User Interface) on different platforms (for example websites and mobile app) is to make it as similar as it is possible - to not make users feeling lost.

So here You got the same feature that allows users to choose how it feels about each coin. Do you see any problem here?

The problem is that in web version on the left side there is a "Good" and on right "Bad". And in a mobile app there are reversed. So for users who use both versions, it is really easy to make a mistake here.

Translations

If an app allows changing a language it is always a good idea to check if there aren't any bugs :) My native language is Polish, so here I will switch between it and a English.

Case 1

Here as language is set "English". But for some reason Sort button is in a Polish "Kapitalizacja rynkowa"

What's more when we open 'Sort' option there are more "mixed" English - Polish names:

Case 2

Also in the tab: Select Language, there is a strange situation. All languages are in let's call it 'simple version - I mean English, Deutsch etc.

For some reason there is a different story with Polish - instead of a 'Polish' we got 'język polski' - that means 'Polish language'. So to be consequences all should be in that format: English language, Deutsch Language or it should be Polish instead of 'język polski'.

Case 3

Also, there are some problems when we change the language to Polish.

Here on the main screen we still got a tab called "Categories" which of course is in English, correct version should be: "Kategorie"

The next window with some problems is Settings. Here I marked not translated terms: "Notifications" (should be "Powiadomienia" or "Notyfikacje"), "Follow us on Instagram" and "Join our Discord Server".

Not meaningful error message

When it is something wrong with the application error message should be meaningful and clear for the user - to know what he does wrong.

Here in a field that allows You to put a name for portfolio, I put really long text (it is also a really common test for all fields that allow users to put some text).

In result, user got some error messages marked on the screenshot - but it saying nothing about what really is a problem - the text is too long.

No way to end the process

One last thing for today's article, but worst from the point of the application's working point of view.

In a Search option again put that long text and start searching.

In that case 'endless' searching started. To be honest - I don't know it is really "endless" because I shut down the app after 6 minutes of waiting.

What is worse in that state, the app not responding to any user operation - that 'X' close button doesn't do anything.

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Well, that is all for today - hope You like that "live" testing example. For sure, I will add new examples from different apps, websites :)

Are those all bugs in CoinGecko app? For sure not, to be honest, that tests take me about 30 minutes, so for sure there are more things that need to be fixed. Maybe You will try to find some of them? Maybe in the future, I will check it again to see if some of them were fixed :)